THE THING

Towering cliffs of solid ice rose from the canyon they were
exploring. They knew it was here. Fear rode the moaning
wind on swirling razor-like flakes. On a muffled word from
Bennings, Childs activated the nozzle. The tip of the flame-
thrower sprang to life. Bennings was scanning the cliff's
jagged crevices when something clutched his ankles. He
looked down and barely had time to scream as his body was
yanked below the surface of the ice . . .
 TWELVE MEN
Trapped in the Antarctic.
ELEVEN
Discover the intruder.
TEN
Battle the alien force.
NINE
Agonize for the answer.
EIGHT
Desperate to be spared.
SEVEN
Consumed one by one.
SIX...FIVE...FOUR...THREE...
They will all die.
Unless something, anything stops
A TURMAN-FOSTER COMPANY PRODUCTION
JOHN CARPENTER'S
"THE THING"
starring KURT RUSSELL
Screenplay by BILL LANCASTER
Special Visual Effects by ALBERT WHITLOCK
Special make-up Effects by ROB BOTTIN
Music by ENNIO MORRICONE
Director of Photography DEAN CUNDEY
Associate Producer LARRY FRANCO
Executive Producer WILBUR STARK
Co-Producer STUART COHEN
Produced by DAVID FOSTER & LAWRENCE
TURMEN
Directed by JOHN CARPENTER
A UNIVERSAL PICTURE
Based on the story "Who Goes There?"
by JOHN W. CAMPBELL, JR.
 THE THING
Copyright © 1982 by Universal Pictures, Inc.
All rights reserved.
A Bantam Spectra Book
First Printing February 1982
Second Printing July 1982
SPECTRA and the protrayal of a boxed "s" are trademarks of Bantam
Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any other means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any information
storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that
this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed"
to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received
any payment for this "stripped book"
ISBN 0-553-20477-7
Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam
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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS

Title
Copyright
Dedication
About the Author

THE THING
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
For my niece, Shannon,
With a great deal of love,
And so the kids at school will finally believe
you . . .
 The worst desert on Earth never gets hot. It boasts no
towering sand dunes like the Sahara, no miles and miles of
barren gravel as does the Gobi. The winds that torment this
empty land make those that sweep over the Rub al Khali
seem like spring breezes.
There are no venomous snakes or lizards here because
there is nothing for them to poison. A bachelor wolf couldn't
make a living on the slopes of its Vinson Massif. Even the
insects shun the place. The birds who eke out a precarious
life along its shores prefer to swim rather than fly, seeking
sustenance from the sea rather than a hostile land. Here live
seals that feed on other seals, microscopic krill that support
the world's largest mammals. Yet it takes acres to support a
single bug.
A mountain named Erebus stands cloaked in permanent
ice, but burns with the fires of hell. Elsewhere the land itself
lies crushed beneath the solid ice up to three miles thick. In
this frozen waste, this gutted skeleton of a continent unlike
any other, only one creature stands a chance of surviving
through the winters. His name is Man, and like the diving
spider he's forced to carry his sustenance on his back.
Sometimes Man imports other things to Antarctica along
with his heat and food and shelter that would not have an
immediate impact on an impartial observer. Some are
benign, such as the desire to study and learn, which drives
him down to this empty wasteland in the first place. Others
can be more personal and dangerous. Paranoia, fear of open
places, extreme loneliness; all can hitch free and unwelcome
rides in the minds of the most stable of scientists and
technicians.
 Usually these feelings stay hidden, locked away behind
the need to concentrate on surviving hundred-mile-an-hour
winds and eighty-below-zero temperatures.
It takes an extraordinary set of circumstances to
transform paranoia into a necessary instrument for survival.
When the wind blows hard across the surface of
Antarctica, the universe is reduced to simpler elements. Sky,
land, horizon all cease to exist. Differences die as the world
melts into blustery, homogeneous cream.
Out of that swirling, confused whiteness came a sound;
the erratic buzzing of a giant bee. It cut through the
insistent moan of the wind and it was too close to the
ground.
The pilot let out an indecipherable oath as he fought the
controls. The helicopter struggled to gain altitude. Whiskers
fringed the man's cheeks and chin. His eyes were bloodshot
and wild.
He should not have been walking, much less guiding a
stubborn craft through wild air. Something unseen was
compelling him, driving him. A recent horror. It overrode
common sense and rational thought. There was no light of
reason in the pilot's eyes. Only murder. Murder and
desperation.
His companion was bigger, tending to fat. Normally he
lived within the purview of a fine-grain microscope and
composed lengthy dissertations on the nature of creatures
too small to be seen by the naked eye.
But he was not hunting microbes now. His demeanor was
anything but composed. There was nothing of scientific
detachment in his voice as he shouted directions to the pilot
while staring through a battered pair of Zeiss binoculars.
Across his thighs rested a high-powered hunting rifle, the 4X
scope mounted on it a clumsy parody of the elegant
instruments he usually worked with.
He lowered the lenses and squinted into the blowing
snow, then kicked open the door of the chopper and set the
restraining brace to keep it open. The pilot growled
something and his companion responded by raising the rifle.
He checked to make sure there was a shell resting in the
chamber. The two men argued madly, like children fighting
over a plaything. But there was no note of play in their
voices, no innocence in their eyes.
The wind caught the machine, throwing it sideways
through the sky. The pilot cursed the weather and struggled
to bring his craft back to an even keel.
Ahead and below, a dog turned to snarl at the pursuing
helicopter. He was a husky and malamute mix, but still
looked as out of place on that cold white surface as any
mammal. He turned and jumped forward just as a shell
exploded at his heels. The sound of the shot was quickly
swallowed by the constant, uncaring wind.
The chopper dipped crazily in the whirlpool of wild air. It
continued to fly too close to the ground. An inspector would
have recommended revocation of its pilot's license on the
spot. The pilot didn't give a damn what anyone watching
might think. He didn't care about things like licenses
anymore, now his sole concern in life was murder.
A second shot went wild and hit nothing but sky. The pilot
slammed a fist into his friend's shoulder and pleaded for
better aim.
Panting heavily, the dog topped an icy rise. It found itself
confronting an alien outcropping. The sign had been beaten
up by the weather but still stood, its foundation imbedded in
ice as solid as stone. It shifted only slightly in the wind. It
read:
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION—OUTPOST #31
UNITED STATIONS OF AMERICA
A blast from the rifle missed both sign and dog alike. The
animal pulled itself together and galloped down the
opposite slope, half-running, half-falling through the slick
snow and compacted ice particles.
 The plain, rectangular metal building lay nearly hidden
beneath shifting snow, a structural corpse subject to regular
winter burial and summer exhumation. Not far from its tall
tower thrust bravely into the wind, multiple guy wires
keeping the unavoidable swaying to a minimum.
Instruments poked out of its crown at various angles and for
various purposes, sampling wind velocity, precipitation
(which was rare), pressure, temperature, and a plethora of
other meteorological phenomena without parallel anywhere
else on Earth.
Lying at varying distances from the central building,
which looked like a steel trap in the middle of the
compound, were several sheds of varying permanence and
composition. The solidity of their construction depended on
the importance of their contents. Some were constructed of
metal welded or riveted together. Others were makeshifts
cobbled together out of slats of corrugated steel, plastic, and
scrap lumber. There was no evidence of that mainstay of
modern construction, concrete. In the climate of Antarctica
concrete quickly turned back into piles of sand and gravel.
Wind and ice assaulted each edifice with a fine impartiality.
Walkways made of wooden planks regularly swept clear
of blowing snow connected the hodgepodge of buildings,
the wood starkly incongruous in a land where the only trees
lay long buried and fossilized. Guide ropes stretched in pairs
from structure to structure, marking the location of the
walkways and singing steady songs to the wind with vocal
cords of hemp.
Multicolored pennants snapped at the wind's whim,
marking not only walkways and buildings but the often
concealed locations of outdoor experiments; color-coding
science.
Behind a slanted wind shield that pointed toward the
nearby bottom of the world a pair of helicopters squatted
idle, their blades rendered heavy and immobile with
accumulations of ice, their transparent bubble cockpits
turned opaque. A powerful bulldozer sat nearby, its
protective tarpaulin flapping in the gale like the wings of a
lumbering albatross.
A large red balloon bobbed and ducked at the end of its
restraining cord. From the end of the cord hung a small
metal box, ready to go wherever the balloon chose to carry it
and already beeping efficiently to the automatic recorder
safe inside the main building.
Norris held the middle of the line and stared at his watch.
He looked something like the glacial outcroppings that
occasionally broke the level monotony of the terrain
surrounding the outpost. That was appropriate, since his
interests were primarily concerned with rocks and the ways
in which they moved and what moved below them. He was
particularly interested in the black, viscous substance that
filled the industrial bloodstream of the modern world. That
interest was the principal reason for his presence at the
outpost, though he often assisted in general study and
research as well, hence his helping with the weather balloon.
He tried not to stay outside any longer than was
necessary. By rights he shouldn't be here at all because of
his unstable heart, but his agile brain and repeated requests
had overcome the resistance of those who made such
assignments.
Bennings was glad of the help. The meteorologist had
sent up dozens of red balloons and their beeping passengers
by himself, but it was always easier with someone to hold
the balloon while you made final adjustments. During his
first tour he'd made the mistake of going outside alone in
late fall, only to see his balloon soar gracefully off into the
sky with its instrument package still sitting on the ground.
Twenty yards from them a much larger man was hunkered
over a snowmobile. He'd pushed its shielding tarp aside and
used a special plastic pick to chip ice from its flanks. This
was necessary to gain access to the machine's guts, which
were overdue for a checkup.
 Childs had not been one for a long time, though he still
knew how to enjoy himself like a youngster. He loved three
things: machinery, singing groups who danced as much as
they sang (and often better), and a woman far away. He'd
grown up in Detroit, so Antarctica didn't seem as bleak and
desolate to him as it did to most of the others.
A familiar but unexpected noise, a distant humming,
made him turn and look curiously to his left. The fringe of fur
lining his jacket hood tickled his mouth and made him spit.
The sputum froze instantly.
Norris looked up from his watch and stared curiously in
the same direction. So did Bennings, the weather balloon
momentarily forgotten. A loud whine was coming rapidly
toward them. He frowned, making the ice in his beard crack.
Out of the distant scrim of blowing ice particles came a
helicopter. It shouldn't have been out in this kind of weather.
It certainly had no business near the outpost, where aerial
company wasn't due for months. Once it dipped so low that
the landing skids flicked snow from the crest of the little hill
it barely cleared.
A man was leaning out of the right side of the transparent
cockpit, seemingly without thought for his own safety as the
craft dipped and bobbed in the clutching wind. He was firing
a rifle at a small, running object. A dog.
Norris looked to his right, and found Childs staring
incredulously back toward him. Neither man said anything.
There were no words capable of explaining the insanity
coming toward them, and no time to voice them if there
were.
The complaining copter engine began to subside as its
unseen pilot fought to bring it in for a landing. It was going
much too fast. The skis bounced once off the hard ice, the
force of the impact bending both. It bounced forward again,
clearing the racing, dodging dog, which cut sharply to its
right to avoid the plunging metal.
 A third bounce and it seemed as if the craft would come
to a safe halt, But the wind caught it, skewing it dangerously
sideways. It flipped over on its side. Norris, Bennings, and
Childs all dove for cover, trying to bury themselves in the
snow as rotors snapped off like toothpicks. The fragments of
steel blade went whizzing through the air in random
directions like weapons thrown by some mad Chinese
martial arts expert. One whooed dangerously close to
Norris's head, coming within a yard of decapitating him.
The man with the rifle managed to jump clear and
scramble to his feet. He was bleeding from the forehead and
limped on one leg as he tried to aim the rifle.
Behind him, sudden warmth temporarily invaded the
realm of cold as the fuel tanks ruptured and the copter
vomited a fireball into the wind. Above it, an already
forgotten red balloon was soaring toward the Ross Ice Shelf.
Norris and Bennings rose cautiously, then started toward
the blazing ruin of the helicopter.
Less than a dozen men remained inside the compound. A
few had been playing cards. Others were monitoring their
respective instrumentation, preparing lunch, or relaxing in
their sleeping cubicles. The sound of the exploding chopper
shattered the daily routine.
The dog reached Norris and Bennings as they struggled
through the snow toward the still flaming wreck. At the same
time the copter's sole survivor spotted them and bellowed
something in a foreign tongue. He was reloading his weapon
as he raved on at them.
The two scientists exchanged a glance. "Recognize any
markings?" Norris shouted above the wind.
Bennings shook his head, and yelled toward the bleeding
survivor. "Hey! What happened? What about your buddy?"
He gestured toward the burning craft.
Showing no sign of comprehension the man with the rifle
waved angrily at them. He was screaming steadily. Blood
was beginning to freeze on his face, blocking one eye.
 Norris stopped. The dog stood on its hind legs, pawing
Bennings and licking his hand. It was whimpering, sounding
confused and afraid.
"Say, boy," the meteorologist began, "what's the matter?
Your master is—"
The man from the helicopter raised the hunting rifle and
fired at them.
Bennings stumbled backward in shock, the husky going
down in a pile with him. Norris stood as frozen as the land
under his boots, gaping at the oncoming madman.
"What the fu—?"
The gun roared a second time. The man came stumbling
toward them, trying to aim and yelling incomprehensibly. He
was seeing, but not clearly. Blood continued to seep into his
eyes. Blood, and something more.
Ice and snow flew skyward as one bullet after another
whacked into the ground around the two stunned scientists.
Another smacked wetly into the dog's hip, sending it
spinning. It yelped in pain.
Childs stared at this windswept tableau in disbelief until
the gun seemed to swerve in his direction. Then he dove
behind the snowmobile's concealing bulk.
A fourth shot struck Bennings. Still gaping dumbly at
their crazed assailant, he fell over on his side. Cursing,
Norris reached down and got both hands on the shoulders of
his friend's parka and began pulling him toward the main
building. Trailing blood, the dog fought to crawl along beside
them.
The stranger was very close now. The muzzle of his rifle
looked as big as a train tunnel. But there was a sudden lull
in the shooting.
Raving steadily to himself, the man stopped and
frantically struggled to reload his weapon. Shells fell from
his jacket pocket into the snow. He fell on them, scrabbling
through the white powder and shoving them into the
magazine one at a time.
 Total confusion reigned inside the compound. Its
inhabitants were used to coping with hurricane-force winds
and abysmal cold, with power failures and short rations.
They were not prepared to deal with an assassin.
Several of the men started throwing on outdoor clothing:
parkas, down vests, insulated gloves. Their only plan was to
get ouside and help Norris and Bennings. A few, mesmerized
by the drama taking place out on the ice, simply stared
through foggy windows as if blankly watching one of the
several camp television sets.
From the recreation room came the sound of triple paned
glass shattering. It took several blows from the gun butt to
break through the thick insulating panes. Then the muzzle
of the .44 pointed through the sudden gap, steadied by two
hands.
Outside, the intruder was gaining on Norris and
Bennings. Having finally managed to reload the rifle its
owner raised it and took shaky aim. A shot sounded, slightly
deeper than any that had gone before. The man's head
jerked backward, his rifle firing at a cloud. He dropped to his
knees, then fell face down into the snow.
Norris halted his desperate backtracking, his chest
pounding. He let go of Bennings's jacket. The meteorologist
clutched at his wound and gazed in fascination at their
suddenly motionless assailant. The injured dog lay close by,
whining in pain. Across the veiled whiteness Childs
cautiously rose to peer out over the top of the snowmobile.
Once again the only sound that could be heard was the
wail of the constant wind.
Inside the rec room the rumble of confused voices had
ceased. Men who'd been in the process of donning parkas
stopped closing snaps and fighting zippers. Every eye had
shifted from the scene outside to the station manager. Garry
flipped open the cylinder of the Magnum and extracted the
single spent shell, then closed it tight again, nudged the
safety, and slipped the gun back into the holster riding his
belt.
The station manager grew aware he was the new focus of
attention. Ex-Army, he wore the gun more out of habit than
necessity. Sometimes an old habit could prove useful.
"Quit gaping. Fuchs, Palmer, Clark . . ." he gestured
toward the outside with his head . . . "you're already half
dressed. Do something useful. Get out there and put out
that fire."
"Why bother?" Palmer was ever argumentative. He
brushed long blond hair away from his face. "There's nothing
else out there to burn. I've seen enough crashes to know
that pilot didn't have a chance in hell."
"Do it." Garry's tone was curt. "Maybe we'll find
something useful in the wreckage."
"Like what?" asked Palmer belligerently.
"Like an explanation. Now move it!" He turned his
attention to the youngest man in the room. "Sanders, see if
you can find a replacement pane for the window."
"That's Childs's job," came the quick reply. "I run
communications, not repair."
"Childs is out there. Hurt, maybe."
"Mierda del toro," Sanders grumbled, but moved out of
the room to comply with the order.
The snowblower quickly subdued the flames, but they
found no explanations in the seared cockpit of the chopper,
and not much of the pilot, either. More of the men's
attention was directed back toward the compound and the
exterior digital readout, which provided a constant account
of the temperature and windchill factor.
Back in the rec room the rest of the men were gathered
around the body of the berserk man who'd wielded the
indiscriminate rifle. There was a neat hole in the center of
his forehead. One or two of the men muttered quietly that
Garry might've aimed for something less lethal. Bennings
and Norris wouldn't have thought much of such complaints.
 Garry was going through the man's pockets, underneath
the thick winter coveralls. He came up with a battered black
wallet that contained pictures of a woman surrounded by
three smiling children, of a house, some folding money, a
couple of peculiar credit cards, other personal paraphernalia
some of which was recognizable and some of which was not,
and most importantly, an official-looking identification card.
Garry studied it. "Norwegian," he announced tersely.
"Name's Jan Bolen. Don't ask me how you pronounce it."
Fuchs was standing next to the large relief map of
Antarctica that dominated the far wall. He was the youngest
member of the crew, excepting Clark and Sanders. Sanders
ran telecommunications and Clark ran the dogs, but
sometimes Fuchs felt inferior to both of them despite all his
advanced learning. This country was kinder to such men
than to sensitive assistant biologists.
The body lay across a couple of card tables that had
hastily been shoved together. Fuchs was the only one whose
attention was on something else.
"Sanae's clear across the continent," he told the station
manager. "They couldn't have flown all the way from there in
that copter. But they have a base nearby. Recent setup, if I
remember the bulletin correctly."
"How far is it?" asked Garry.
Fuchs studied the map, using his thumb to plot against
the scale. "I'd guess about eighty kilometers southwest."
Garry didn't try to hide his surprise. "That far? That's a
helluva distance to come in a chopper in this weather."
Behind him Sanders was carefully fitting the heavy new
glass into the gap the station manager had made.
Garry turned his attention to Childs. Norris was seated
next to him. Both men had calmed down somewhat since
the attack. Childs was still picking ice out of his beard.
"How you doing, Childs?"
The mechanic looked up at him. "Better than Bennings."
 Garry grunted, glancing at Norris as he spoke. They all
worried about Norris. "You catch anything he was saying out
of all that raving?"
Childs gave him a twisted grin. "Am I starting to look
Norwegian to you, bwana? You been out in the snow too
many times. Sure I caught what he said. He said, 'Tru de
menge, halt de foggen.' That a help?"
Garry didn't smile, shifting his questioning to the
geophysicist. "How about you?"
"Yeah, I caught something," Norris muttered angrily. "I
caught that he wanted the better part of my ass to come
apart. That was easy enough to understand."
The station manager just nodded, turning a concerned
gaze back to the body on the table. It was past giving him
the answers he wanted . . .
Everybody liked Copper. The doctor seemed so out of
place at the station, with his ever present paternal grin and
Midwestern twang. He didn't belong out here, serving the
men who studied a frozen Hades. He belonged back in
Indiana somewhere, treating little girls for measles and boys
for scratches caused by falling off fences. He ought to be
posing for a Norman Rockwell type painting to adorn some
middle-class periodical.
Instead, he plied his trade at the bottom of the Earth.
He'd volunteered for the post, because beneath that Dr.
Gillespie exterior lurked the heart of a mildly adventurous
man. The others were glad he was around.
At the moment he was working on Bennings's
outstretched leg. Off in a corner of the infirmary, Clark the
handler was mending the hip of the wounded husky. The
single facility had to serve the medical needs of both dogs
and men. Neither resented the presence of the other, and
Clark and Copper often helped each other during more
complex procedures. The men didn't care, as long as the
medications didn't get mixed up.
 The meteorologist let out an "ouch" as the doctor moved
the needle. Copper gave him a reproving look.
"Don't 'ouch' me, Bennings. At least be as brave as the
dog. Two lousy stitches. Bullet just grazed you. Hardly broke
your precious skin."
"Yeah, well, it didn't feel like it." The needle moved a last
time and Bennings grimaced melodramatically.
Copper tied off the stitching and helped the shaken
Bennings swing his legs off the table. The meteorologist was
still trembling, and not from the effects of the wound.
"Jesus, what the hell were they doing?" he mumbled.
"Flying that low, in this kind of weather. Shooting at a dog . .
. at us . . ." He shook his head slowly, unable to make sense
out of the madness that had intruded on an otherwise
perfectly normal day.
Copper shrugged, unable to enlighten his friend, He put
the needle back in the sterilizer and turned it on. It hummed
softly. "Stir crazy, maybe."
"Is that a medical diagnosis?"
"Funny. I mean cabin fever, some kind of argument that
exploded out of all proportion. We'll probably never find out
exactly what caused it."
"Garry will." Bennings sounded assured. "If I know him,
he'll find out what the hell's going on or know the reason
why. Give the man that. He's tenacious." He glanced down at
his repaired leg, remembered staring down the barrel of the
hunting rifle, and added quietly, "Also a helluva good shot."
A sharp yelp made both men turn to look. Clark tried to
comfort the injured animal, while glancing apologetically
toward the others. "I'll be here a while yet. The shell's in
pretty tight. I'd rather work it out carefully and save the leg.
Let me know what they find out, will you?"
Copper nodded, while helping Bennings limp out of the
infirmary. Behind them the dog continued to whine in pain
as Clark moved a light closer and continued probing for the
bullet.
 Blair leaned against the entryway to the telecom room
and ran a hand across his naked forehead. Dirt and sweat
came away against his palm. You were always dirty at the
station, with showers restricted to two a week. It was funny,
really. You trod over thirty percent of all the fresh water on
Earth and had to ration your showers because of the energy
requirements.
Damn the interruption, anyway. He had two papers to
finish plus the regular weekly reports to file, not to mention
a brace of ongoing outside experiments that needed
constant checking. Ever since the funding cutback he'd
been forced to manage with only Fuchs to help, though
Bennings and Norris both had been good about trying to
help out. But they had their own work to monitor.
He chewed on the unlit cigarette and stared as Sanders
manipulated dials and buttons. Static hissed from a
overhead speaker. Blair had been listening to it rise and fall
for ten minutes. Faint reception never won fair lady, he
thought sourly.
Finally Sanders turned to him, looking bored. "It's no go.
Even if I could speak Norwegian. Even if I knew their damn
frequencies."
"Well, get to somebody." Blair was as frustrated by attack
as everyone else. "Anybody. Try McMurdo again. We've got
to report this mess before someone else beats us to it or
we're liable to have an international incident on our hands.
And you know what that would mean. Work interrupted
while everyone troops off to file depositions and personal
accounts."
"Wouldn't bother me," Sanders was a couple months over
twenty-one. No one at the station seemed to know how he'd
obtained his position, or why he'd bothered.
Probably the ads had made it sound romantic. Six months
away from the sights and sounds (not to mention the
warmth) of Los Angeles had changed the telecom operator's
mind, and he made no effort to hide his unhappiness. He'd
tell anyone who'd stop to listen how he'd been duped.
But he was stuck with the job for a year. No wine, no
women, and not much song. Certainly no romance. The girl
friend he'd taken the job to impress was probably lying on
the beach at Santa Monica right now, drinking wine and
nestling into somebody else's arms.
The coming winter would be harder on Sanders than most
of them.
"Try McMurdo again."
Sanders sounded disgusted. "Who do you think I've been
trying? Look, I haven't been able to reach shit in two weeks.
I doubt if anybody's talking to anybody else on the whole
continent. You ought to know what a storm like this does to
communications."
Blair turned away from the younger man and looked
toward the narrow window set high in the wall across the
hallway. Beyond the damp glass he could see nothing but
blowing snow. The lower half of the window was already
buried. Another month would cover it completely.
"Yeah," he muttered resignedly, "I know . . ."
 The rumbling was subdued and steady, a sound not
unlike the wind howling outside the station. But softer. It
came from one of the many hallways that connected the
multiple rooms and storage sections of the compound.
Slowly it moved toward the recreation room. Ears took
note of its approach, but none of the men assembled there
bothered to turn toward it. The noise was well known to all of
them and no cause for alarm.
Nauls skidded to a flashy stop in one of the doorways and
braced himself against the jamb. His legs shifted alternately
as he balanced himself on the roller skates and stared at the
others.
"I heard" His eyes took in the body still lying on the card
tables. "So what's it mean?"
"Nobody knows yet," Fuchs told him. "You got any ideas?"
"Sure." The cook grinned at the young biologist. "Maybe
we at war with Norway."
Palmer wasn't much older than Nauls. He'd finally gotten
control of his hair. It hung down his back in a single fall,
secured with a single rubber band. He smiled at the cook's
joke as he lit up a joint.
A funny smile, was Palmer's. He was something else with
machinery and not a bad pilot, but from time to time he had
a little trouble communicating with other human beings.
Episodes from a slightly radical past (most during the
sixties) occasionally rose up to haunt him, chemically as well
as physically.
He inhaled crisply, turning the smile on Garry. The two
were social opposites, but they got along okay. In a place
like the station, you had. to get along. Garry and Palmer did
so because neither took the other too seriously.
 "Was wondering when El Capitan was going to get a
chance to use his pop gun."
Garry rebuked him with a stern look, and turned to face
Fuchs. The biologist was still studying the large map.
"How long have they been stationed there? You said you
didn't think they'd been set up for very long."
Fuchs walked away from the map and began rummaging
through a box file. He pulled a card out of its middle. "Says
here, about eight weeks."
Dr. Copper entered the room. Bennings was right behind
him, limping rather more severely than the wound
demanded.
Garry looked doubtful. "Relative newcomers. Eight weeks.
That's not enough time for guys to go bonkers."
"Bullshit, sweetheart." Nauls kicked at the floor with his
skates, making the wheels spin. "Five minutes is enough to
put a man over the edge here, if he doesn't have his head
set on straight when he arrives."
"Damn straight," agreed Palmer. He was beginning to look
blissful. Garry didn't give a damn. Palmer did his work.
"I mean," Nauls continued, noticing the remnants of the
tobaccoless cigarette and connecting it with the expression
now slowly spreading over the mechanic's face, "Palmer's
been the way he is since the first day."
Palmer's smile grew wider and he flipped a bird toward
the cook.
"It depends on the individual." Copper's tone was more
serious than the cook's, though the sentiment was the same.
"Sometimes personality conflicts combined with related
problems engendered by confinement and isolation can
manifest themselves with surprising speed."
Garry considered this and spoke to Fuchs. "Does it say
how many in their permanent party?"
Fuchs glanced back at the half-extracted card and pursed
his lips. "If this is up-to-date, they apparently started with
just six. So there'd be four back at their camp."
 "That's not necessarily valid any longer," said Copper
quietly. Everyone's attention shifted to the camp doctor.
"Meaning what, doc?" wondered Bennings.
"Meaning that we don't know when our two visitors went
over the edge, or why, or if they had mental company. Even
if they acted alone, guys as crazy as that," and he gestured
meaningfully toward the motionless body on the card tables,
"could have done a lot of damage in their own neighborhood
before getting to us. Which might be another reason why
Sanders can't raise their camp on the radio."
"They might only be monitoring their own transmissions,"
Norris pointed out.
Copper looked doubtful. "Every modern European speaks
a little English. They'd at least acknowledge, I'd think."
Garry looked back at the tables. "He didn't speak any
English."
"Stress of the moment," Copper suggested. 'At such
times, people usually can only think in their native tongue."
The station manager turned away, muttering unhappily.
"If what you say is true about them doing damage to their
own camp, there's not much we can do about it."
"Oh yes there is," the doctor countered. "I'd like to go
over there. Maybe I can help someone. Maybe I can even
find some answers."
"In this weather?"
The doctor turned to the man standing closest to him.
"Bennings? What about the weather?"
The meteorologist considered. "I'd like to make a fresh
check of the instruments, but according to the last readings
I took the wind's supposed to let up a tad over the next few
hours."
"A tad?" Garry gave him a hard look.
Bennings fidgeted. "Gimme a break, chief. Trying to
predict the winter weather down here's like trying to find ice
cubes in London. It's always a crap shoot. But that's my best
guess, based on the most recent info."
 "What's your opinion of the doc's idea?"
"I wouldn't care to do it myself." He moved to inspect the
wall map. "But it should be a reasonable haul. Even taking
the winds into account I figure less than an hour there, hour
back."
Garry mulled the idea over, not liking it much. But he
desperately wanted some explanations before both the
weather and official inquiries started to come in. Besides
which, as Copper had pointed out, there might be injured
needing help at the Norwegian station. What would the
official reaction be if he didn't make an effort to help them?
Palmer took the last hit off his joint. "Shit, doc. I'll give
you a lift if—"
Garry interrupted him sharply. "Forget it, Palmer." He
turned back to Copper, who was waiting patiently for a
decision. "Doc, you're a pain in the ass."
"Only when I'm giving certain injections."
"Oh hell." The station manager turned away to hide his
smile. "Norris, go get Macready."
A few easy laughs filled the room. Norris grinned at
superior. "Macready ain't going nowhere. Bunkered in 'til
spring. Who says humans can't hibernate?"
"Neveready Macready," Bennings adde
Garry looked bored. "Just go and get him."
"You're the boss, boss." Norris headed toward the door.
"Anyway, he's probably ripped. Palmer'll have to go
anyhow."
Despite familiarity bred of constant repetition, it took
Norris several minutes to prepare himself to go outside.
Slogging along beneath sixty-five pounds of extra clothing,
he made his way toward the outside door.
Wind hammered at his face as he pulled the door aside.
Instinctively, he held his lips apart so the saliva in his mouth
wouldn't freeze them together. Ice particles rattled on his
snow goggles.
 Maybe Bennings was right. It seemed as he started up
the stairs that the wind had let up slightly. Windchill factor
had fallen from the rapidly fatal to the merely intimidating.
Of course they had yet to experience a real winter storm.
They were still basking in comparatively mild autumn
weather.
His destination was a shack one hundred yards from the
main compound, connected to it by guide ropes and a
wooden walkway. A hundred yards on foot in the Antarctic
seems like a hundred miles, even when the hiker is blessed
by the presence of a visible destination.
He emerged from the stairs leading down into the central
building and started along the boardwalk, his gloved hands
sliding easily on the familiar slickness of the guide rope. A
few icicles drooped from it and broke off as his sliding
fingers made contact with them. He used the rope not only
to guide himself but to pull his way up the slight slope. Here
arms had to compliment legs that had a tendency to go on
strike after even brief exposure to the bitter cold.
It was comfortably warm inside the shack, which had
double walls and radiant electric heat. Macready kept it as
tropical as regulations would allow. He hated the cold, hated
it even worse than Sanders. Isolation he didn't mind. The
mitigating factor was the pay, which was astounding.
He took the ice cubes from the little refrigerator and
dropped them into the glass. Amber liquid of impressive
potency sloshed around the cubes.
"Bishop to knight four," said a calm voice that wasn't his.
He sipped at the whiskey and walked over to the table
holding the game. A large gaily colored Vera Cruz sombrero
hung from his neck and bounced gently against his back. He
bent to duck the naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling.
The shack was small, individualistic, and furnished in
contemporary unkempt. Garry called it a pigsty. Macready
preferred the description "lived-in". It was a point the station
manager didn't press. Macready did his work. Usually.
 Several large posters of warm places provided interior
color. Naples, Rio, Jamaica, Acapulco, one blonde, and two
redheads. It was hot enough in the shack to make you
sweat.
The electronic chessboard on the table was larger than
the average model. Macready sat down and chuckled over
his opponent's bad move.
"Poor little son of a bitch. You're starting to lose it, aren't
you?"
He thought a moment, then tapped in his move. The
machine's response was immediate.
"Pawn takes queen at knight four." Electronically
manipulated pieces quivered slightly as they shuffled across
the board.
Macready's grin slowly faded as he examined the new
alignment. Someone was pounding on his door. He ignored
the noise while brooding over his next move, finally entering
the instructions.
Again pieces shifted. "Rook to knight six," said the
implacable voice from the board's internal speaker. "Check."
The pounding was getting insistent. Macready's teeth
ground together as he glared at the board. He bent forward
and opened a small flap on the side of the playing field.
Colored circuitry stared back at him as he dumped the
remnants of his drink over them. Snapping and popping
burst from the machine, followed by a flash of sparks and
very little smoke.
"Bishop to pawn three takes rook to queen five king to
bishop two move pawn to pawn six to pawn seven to pawn
eight to pawn nine to pawn to pawn to
pawnnizzzzfisssttt*ttt* . . ."
Macready listened until the gibberish stopped, then rose
and stumbled toward the door, mumbling disgustedly to
himself.
". . . Cheating bastard . . . damn aberrant programming . .
. better get my money back . . ."
 Carefully he cracked open the door. Heat burst past him,
sucked toward the South Pole. Norris pushed through and
past him, a rush of snow following like a white remora.
"You jerking off or just pissed?" the geophysicist growled,
slapping at his sides. "Why the hell didn't you open up?"
Macready said nothing but gestured toward the still
smoking board. "We got any replacement modules for these
chess things down in supply?"
"How the hell would I know? Get your gear on."
The chess game was suddenly forgotten. Macready
regarded his visitor with sudden suspicion. "What for?"
"What d'you think for?"
"Oh no." He started backing away from Norris. "No way.
Not a chance. Huh-uh . . ."
"Garry says—"
"I don't give a shit what Garry says." Outside, the wind
howled. To Macready it sounded hungry.
Childs had one of the big torches out and was keeping it
close to his body as he melted ice from the helicopter's
rotors and engine cowling. Of all the outside jobs, melting
off machinery was one of the most pleasurable. At least you
could keep yourself defrosted along with the equipment.
The wind howled around him as he worked. He glanced
skyward. Despite Bennings's assurances he didn't envy
whoever had to take the chopper up. No one would, unless
Copper insisted. Childs smiled to himself. Plump old Doc
Copper usually got his way. Because once he proposed
something, none of the other macho types could very well
back out without looking silly.
He turned his attention back to the nearly de-iced copter
and cut frozen water from its landing gear.
The little cluster of heavily dressed men resembled a
group of migrating bears as they wound their way through
the narrow corridor leading toward the helicopter pad. They
were already starting to sweat, despite the special
absorptive thermal underwear. The clothes they wore were
designed to be comfortable at seventy below, not seventy
above.
Dr. Copper carried a medical satchel. It was made of
metal and formed high-impact plastic and could hold
anything up to and including a portable surgery. Its standard
color was yellow, but Copper had personally spray-painted it
black. He was a bit of a traditionalist.
Macready was studying a flight chart printed on a plastic
sheet and grumbling nonstop, his own mental engine
already flying over their intended route.
"Craziness . . . this is goddamn insane . . . I don't know if I
can even find this place in clear weather . . ."
"Quit the griping, Macready," Garry ordered him. "The
sooner you get out there, the sooner you're back."
"If we get there," the pilot snorted. "It's against
regulations to go up this time of year! I'm not supposed to
fly again 'til spring. I'll put in a protest. Regulations say I
don't have to go up in this kind of weather."
"Screw regulations," Copper told him. "Records indicate
there are six guys out at that Norwegian station. Two nuts
from six guys leaves maybe four crawling around on their
bellies praying for help. Antarctica's like the ocean, Mac.
First law of the sea says you help a fellow mariner in trouble
before you think of anything else."
"I don't mind helping 'em," Macready insisted. "I just
don't want to end up crawling around with them when we go
down."
Garry glared at him. "If you aren't ready to make an
occasional risk flight in bad weather then why the hell did
you volunteer for this post?"
Macready smiled, rubbing a thumb and finger together.
"Same reason a lot of us did. But I can't spend it if I'm dead."
"Look, Macready, if you're going to keep on bitching,
Palmer's already offered to take the doc up."
Macready gaped at the station manager, incredulous.
"What are you talking about? Palmer? He's had maybe two
months training in those choppers! Fair weather training."
"Four," Palmer corrected him defiantly from the rear of
the pack. "A little blow doesn't bother me."
"Little blow." Macready shook his head. "Hell, when you
get stoked, Palmer, the end of the world can't bother you.
But maybe the doc isn't as interested in dying happy as you
are, pothead."
"So then you take him up and shut up," Palmer shot back.
"Ahhhhh! " Macready made a rude gesture and turned to
face Bennings. "What's it like out there, anyway? Forty-five
knots?"
"Sixteen," the meteorologist told him.
"Yeah, and the horse you rode in on," Macready snapped.
"Sixteen for how long? You can't tell, this time of year. In five
minutes it could be fifty."
Bennings nodded agreeably. "Possible."
"So what do we do?" Copper halted next to the outside
doorway. The roar of the wind penetrated even the double-
thick, insulated barrier.
"So you open the door," Macready growled, out of
arguments, "unless you want to try and walk through it . . ."
Childs was waiting for them, and gave Copper a hand up
into the cockpit of the chopper. The doctor carefully secured
his bag behind the seat. Outside the plexiglass bubble,
blowing snow was already beginning to obscure their view.
Macready slid in next to him and began flipping switches
and examining readouts on the console. The one readout he
didn't bother to check gave the current exterior
temperature. Once it fell below zero, he no longer cared
what it said. And since it was always below zero it was the
one instrument in the choppers he could usually ignore.
He tightened the sombrero's string beneath his chin. It
hung outside his polar parka, incongruous against his back.
Childs had thoughtfully activated the prewarm. Good
mechanic, Childs. Macready trusted him. The engine had
been heating up for thirty minutes. It ought to start.
 He hit the ignition. For a moment the reluctant rotors
strained against fresh ice. Then they began to spin. The
engine revved with comforting steadiness.
"Hang on over there, doc," he told his passenger. "This
isn't Disneyland."
He pulled back on the controls. The chopper lifted, swung
sideways for an instant, then began a steady climb into the
sky. Macready held it steady, then sent it charging northeast
over the white landscape. It slid into the wind, fighting the
gale like a salmon returning upstream. Macready was too
involved with the controls to consider throwing up. He
couldn't. Not in front of the unruffled Copper.
The doctor relaxed back in his seat, rechecked his seat
belt and shoulder harness, and studied the passing terrain.
He appeared to be enjoying himself. Macready cursed him,
but silently.
Several pairs of eyes watched through temporarily
defogged windows from the rec room as the helicopter
shrank into the distance. Clark rested his palms against the
glass as he stared. Between his skin and the outside were
three layers of special thick glass and two intervening layers
of warmed air. The glass was still cold to his touch.
"Mac's really taken it up, huh?"
Bennings was feeling his leg, having to force himself not
to scratch at the healing itch. "Copper volunteered to check
the Norwegian camp for wounded, and Garry concurred."
"We could have used the dogs," Clark said, slightly hurt
that he hadn't even been considered. "It would've been
safer, in this wind."
"Safer, yeah," agreed Bennings, "but ten times as slow.
We could get a major storm in here any day now. This way
they'll be back in a few hours."
A thick bandage padding the hip where the bullet had
entered, the husky trotted into the room. He padded happily
between the tables and chairs, hobbling only a little on the
damaged leg.
 This is damned insane, Macready thought to himself as
he lifted the copter over an ice ridge. The engine protested,
but only for a second or two. A few boulders atop the ridge
showed through the snow. Buried baldies, Macready mused.
Funny how you could get lonely for something as common
as grass. He grinned slightly. Except for Palmer and Childs's
imports, of curse.
The gale had lessened considerably since takeoff and he
had to admit that flying had become almost pleasant. It was
starting to look like they'd make it without any real trouble
The chopper's cockpit heater whined loudly. Macready
had it set on high. As far as he was concerned, that was the
only setting it possessed. Copper was uncomfortably warm,
but said nothing. He'd stand the overheating to keep the
pilot happy.
Macready glanced over at the plastic map set in the
holder on the console. "We ought to be closing on it, Doc, if
the coordinates Fuchs and Bennings gave us are right."
"This isn't the Arctic, Mac. Camps don't float around on
ice floes down here. It'll be where it's supposed to be." He
suddenly pointed down through the bubble. "There, what's
that?"
Smoke was visible directly ahead, and it didn't come from
somebody's chimney. There was one central, dense column
and several smaller sudsidiary plumes. Too many. The wind
made the smoke curl and dance in the Antarctic evening.
Soon the sun would vanish altogether and the long South
Polar night would settle over them.
Macready encircled the half-buried camp. Up close the
smoke seemed unusually thick, almost tarlike. It billowed
skyward from hidden sources. There was no sign of
movement below. Only the wind moved here.
"Anyplace special, Doc?"
Copper was leaning to his right, staring solemnly through
the bubble. "You pick it, Mac. From the looks of things I don't
think it much matters."
 The relaxed wind gave Macready no trouble as he
carefully set the copter down. He cut the engine and
switched over to the prewarm to keep it from icing up. The
rotors slowed, their comforting whine fading to silence,
blending into the mournful wind. Macready unlatched the
cockpit door and stepped out. His first glance was for the
sky. It showed cobalt blue, save for fast-moving clouds.
There was no telling how long the break in the weather
would last. They'd have to hurry.
They slogged toward the camp. A large, prefabricated
metal building loomed directly ahead. It was full of gaping
holes not part of the original design. Macready searched but
couldn't locate an intact window. Broken glass shone like
diamonds in the snow.
Smoke rose from the surface. Like their own camp, most
of this one should be snuggled beneath the ice. It looked like
the ground itself was on fire.
Individual pieces of equipment burned with their own
personal fires, melting their way into the ice and eventual
extinction. A flaming ember whizzed by and both men
instinctively ducked, even though fire here was usually a
welcome companion. But conditioning dies hard.
Copper said nothing, just stared. Macready's thoughts
were a flabbergasted blank. The place looked like Carthage
after the last Punic war.
This wasn't what they'd expected. Not this total
devastation. Macready turned and went back to the
helicopter and thoughtfully pocketed the ignition key.
Eventually they located the source of the main blaze and
also the reason for the unusually thick column of smoke. It
rose from what appeared to be a makeshift funeral pyre.
Books, tires, furniture, scrap lumber; anything that would
burn had been heaped together outside the main building
and set on fire. Discernible among the rest of the inorganic
kindling were the charred remains of several dogs and at
least one man. Mounds of black goo that might have been
asphalt or roofing sealant burned fragrantly among the rest
of the debris.
A small gasoline drum lay on its end nearby, its cap
missing. A larger fuel oil drum squatted off to one side.
Macready checked the smaller container first, then the
larger. Both were empty.
He glanced to his left. Was that only the wind whispering
in his ears? He exchanged a look with Copper. The doctor's
face was pale, and it wasn't from the cold.
Macready made another trip back to the copter and
opened the door. The shotgun slid easily out of its brackets
behind the pilot's seat. He made sure it was loaded, took a
box of shells from the compartment beneath and shoved
them into his pocket, then hurried to rejoin Copper.
The doctor glanced sharply at the gun, whose purpose
was so different from the instruments he carried in his
satchel. But he didn't object to its presence. It seemed small
enough insurance in the face of the violence that had ripped
this camp.
They started in toward the center structure, or rather
what was left of it. Glowing embers continued to waft past
them. One latched onto Macready's shirt-sleeve and he
absently batted it out.
The door was unlocked. Macready turned the latch,
stepped back, and used the muzzle of the shotgun to shove
it inward. It swung loosely and banged against the interior
wall.
Ahead lay a long, pitch-black corridor. There was a switch
just inside the doorway. Copper flipped it several times,
without effect. He pulled a flashlight from his coat and
aimed it down the corridor.
"Anybody here?"
No answer. The beam played off the walls and floor,
revealing a tunnel little different in design and construction
from those back at their own compound.
 Only the wind talked to them, constant as it was
uninformative. Copper looked to the pilot, who shrugged.
"This is your party, Doc."
Copper nodded, and started in. Macready followed and
moved up beside the older man.
Their progress was slow because of the debris that filled
the corridor. Overturned chairs, chests of equipment, loose
wires, and cannisters of gas and liquid made for treacherous
walking. Once Macready nearly went over on his face when
his feet got tangled in an exploded television set. Copper
winced, then gave the pilot a reproving look.
"Maybe I ought to carry the gun?" He extended a hand.
Macready was angry at himself, "I'll watch it. It won't
happen again. Just watch where you point that flashlight."
Copper nodded, and tried to keep the beam focused
equally on the floor and corridor ahead. It was as cold in the
hallway as it was outside.
"Heat's been off in here for quite a while," he said.
Macready nodded, his eyes trying to pierce the darkness
in front of them. "Anybody left alive would've frozen to
death days ago."
"Not necessarily. Just because this one section is exposed
and heatless doesn't mean the whole camp's the same way.
Your shack has its own heat, for example."
"Yeah, but if the generator went out I'd be a popsicle in a
couple of hours."
"Well, they might have portable propane heaters, then."
Macready threw him a sour look. "I love you, Doc. You're
such a damn optimist."
Copper didn't reply; he continued to play his flashlight
beam over floor and walls. The wind wailed overhead.
Macready stopped. "You hear something?"
Copper strained, listened. "Yes. I think so." He shifted the
light. "Mechanical."
They followed the faint noise, which soon turned to an
audible hissing. As they continued down the corridor the
hiss became recognizable as static.
There was a door blocking the end of the corridor. The
steady sputtering came from the other side.
Copper moved the light over the remnant of a door.
Something had taken it apart. An axe protruded from the
center, its head buried deeply in the wood.
Macready put the gun aside, grabbed hold with both
hands, and yanked until it came loose. The cutting edge was
stained dark. He studied it briefly, looking to Copper for
confirmation.
The doctor said nothing, which was confirmation enough
for Macready. There wasn't much blood on the axe, and what
remained was frozen to a maroon crust.
Putting down the axe he retrieved the gun, holding it a
little tighter now as he tried the doorknob. It rotated and the
door opened inward, but halted after moving only a few
inches. The pilot put his shoulder against it and shoved, but
it refused to budge further.
"Blocked from the other side," he said quietly to Copper.
He put his face to the slight opening. "Anybody in there?"
There was no reply. Copper moved up against Macready's
side and shouted past him. "We're Americans!"
"Come to help you!" Macready added. His tongue moved
against the inside of his mouth and he added, "We're alone!"
Still no response. He steadied himself and leaned harder
against the door.
There was a creak. "I think it moved a little," he told the
doctor. "Give me a hand."
Copper added his own bulk to Macready's and pushed.
The frozen floor of the passageway gave poor purchase to
their boots. But by alternately hammering and pressing hard
they managed to edge the door inward an inch at a time.
Eventually they'd widened it enough for Macready to
stick his head inside.
"Give me the light." Copper handed it over and the pilot
directed its beam inward. The static was loud now.
 "See anything, Mac?"
"Yeah." The flashlight revealed banks of electronic
instrumentation, most of it shattered. One console appeared
to be the source of the steady humming. "Communications,"
he told the doctor; "Looks a lot like Sanders's bailiwick,
anyway." He gave the light back to Copper, wedged himself
into the opening, and pushed. The door gave another couple
of inches.
Copper followed him through, shining the light around
the little room. Wind kissed their faces, unexpectedly brisk.
He leaned back and picked out the holes in the ceiling.
A Ganz lantern rested on a corner table. Macready dug
out a match, struck it carefully and applied the flame to the
lantern as he turned the control knob. The butane caught
with a rush, forming a little circle of light.
Lifting the lantern, he turned in a slow circle. The soft
light picked out the top of a man's head, showing just above
the back of a swivel chair.
"Hey, Sweden," he called to the figure, "you okay?"
The chair rocked slightly in the breeze from the ceiling.
Both men moved slowly toward it. Macready put out an arm
and halted the doctor a yard short of the chair, then poked
at it with the shotgun.
"Sweden?"
Copper's gaze moved to the arm resting on one arm of
the chair. A thin red line fell from it, a frozen crimson thread
that ended in a pool of coagulated blood on the wooden
floor.
Macready poked the chair again, stepping around it.
Copper moved around the other side.
The man in the chair was lightly dressed, too lightly for
the subfreezing temperature in the room. His eyes were
open, fixed on something beyond their range of vision. His
mouth was frozen agape. He seemed to have been petrified
in the act of screaming.
 Macready's gaze traveled down the stiff body. The throat
had been slit from ear to ear; both wrists were also slit. An
old-fashioned straight razor lay in the man's lap. It was
stained the same color as the axe that had been buried in
the door. The razor seemed out of place in the
communications room, an antique among solid-state
technology. It had done its job, however.
Macready reached past the wide-eyed corpse and flicked
a switch. The radio's steady hiss died.
There was a door in the far wall, which also turned out to
be blocked from the opposite side. Macready rammed his
shoulder angrily against it, banging it inward. He paused to
catch his breath, and saw his companion gazing in
fascination at the corpse and its multiple slashes.
"My God," the doctor was muttering half to himself, "what
in hell happened here?"
"Come on, Copper," Macready growled at him impatient.
"This one's blocked, too."
"What?" The doctor stared blankly at the pilot, then
snapped out of his daze and moved to help. Together they
battered at the new obstacle until it moved enough to let
them through.
A metal storage cabinet had been used to brace the door.
Beyond lay more blackness. The wind was stronger.
Copper switched off the flashlight and took the lantern
from Macready, freeing the latter to hold the gun with both
hands. He held the lantern high, revealing a series of
wooden steps leading downward.
"Hey, Sweden!" Macready shouted into the blackness as
be started downward.
"They're not Swedish, goddamn it," Copper corrected him
irritably. "They're Norwegian, Macre—"
Something swished out of the darkness and smacked into
his face . . .
 The lantern fell from his startled grasp and went
bouncing down the stairs like a runaway jack o'lantern.
Copper stumbled and felt himself falling as he flailed at
something whipping around his head. Macready leaned back
against a solid wall and extricated his own flashlight,
holding it in one hand and the shotgun in the other as he
tried to locate their assailant.
But Copper had recovered his equilibrium and subdued
his attacker. He held it up, letting the wrinkled paper flap in
the breeze that carried it down the stairwell.
Macready walked over and took the paper. The notations
at its bottom were in Norwegian, but it wouldn't have made
any real difference if they'd been Chinese ideographs.
"Norwegian-of-the-Month, Doc. Harmless." He started to
toss the centerfold away, thought better of it and pocketed
it for detailed inspection later on.
An embarrassed Copper self-consciously adjusted his
clothing and descended the last couple of steps to recover
the still burning lantern. He waited there until Macready had
rejoined him. Together they started down the subterranean
corridor.
The support beams holding up the ceiling were wood.
They were twisted and buckled from the steady pressure of
the ice around them. This was a more glacially active area
than the plateau where the American outpost was located.
The recent conflagration that had seared the camp
further strained the strength of the woodwork. They could
hear it creaking and complaining around them as they made
their way up the tunnel. Bits of ice and silt trickled down,
landing in their hair and tickling their cheeks.
 A broken beam lay crossways ahead of them, blocking
the tunnel. It still smouldered. Macready ducked to slip
gingerly underneath, brushing it gently. A shower of fine
debris rained from the arched ceiling.
"Easy here, Doc. This one belongs in the roof, not on the
floor."
Copper crouched and passed under the beam. It groaned
but held steady. They continued onward.
"Hey!
"Mac? Something wrong?" Copper whirled, shining the
light toward his companion.
Macready was searching the wall behind him. "Bumped
into something. Didn't feel like wood. I thought it moved
when I hit it. Holy shit." He grimaced.
The arm was sticking out of the edge of a steel door set
into the corridor wall. The elbow was about three feet off the
ground. The door was shut tight. Fingers clutched a small
welding torch.
Copper leaned close, examining the trapped limb.
"Watch it, Doc," Macready warned him. "Might still be gas
running to that sucker."
"I don't think so." Copper indicated the torch controls.
"The switch is in the on position, I think. I don't smell
anything." He licked a finger, held it under the nozzle of the
torch. "Nothing. Fuel burned or leaked out long ago."
Macready tried the door. It was unlocked and unlike the
previous two they'd had to wrestle with, this one opened
easily. The arm dropped loosely to the floor. It wasn't
attached to anything anymore, having been severed as well
as held in place by the door. There was no sign of its former
owner.
That was about enough as far as Macready was
concerned. He turned away and coughed, feeling his
stomach play ferris wheel inside his belly. The dips and bobs
of a wind-tossed helicopter didn't bother him, but this . . .
 "Christ," Copper mumbled. He peered into the new
passageway, raising the lantern high. "Let's see where this
one goes."
A short walk brought them to another door. Norwegian
lettering ran across the wood at eye level. Macready readied
the shotgun and gave the door a kick.
At least the doors were becoming more cooperative. This
one swung obediently inward, creaking to a stop. Dozens of
papers were flying around the room beyond the door, fat
white moths shoved around by the wind pouring through
gaping holes in the roof. It was difficult to determine the
purpose of the room because it was a total wreck.
Macready played his flashlight over the carnage.
"Laboratory," Copper announced as the beam traveled
across broken beakers and fragmented test tubes. A fine
microscope lay on its side on the floor, near a cracked
workbench. Other equipment was scattered as if by a
tornado. An expensive oscilloscope sat undamaged on a
shelf, save for the fact that something had punched out its
single cyclopean eye.
"Hey, look at this, Doc." Copper turned. Macready's
flashlight had picked out a gray metal box attached to a
nearby wall. A single unbroken lens pointed toward the floor.
"Portable video camera."
Copper glanced up at it, then started working his way
through the mess toward a tipped-over filing cabinet. Its
drawers had been pulled out, mute testimony to the casual
destruction that had invaded this room as well as to the
source of all the paper fluttering around their heads.
Other papers lay beneath weights or overturned
equipment on the main work table. He shuffled through
them, searching hopefully rather than realistically for the
clue that might explain how catastrophe had overwhelmed
this station.
Macready continued to examine the video camera,
wishing Sanders was with them. "Anything?" he asked
without turning.
Copper shook his head regretfully. "All in Norwegian, I'm
afraid." He pulled out a couple of sheets, squinting at them
in the weak light. "No, here's a couple in German."
"So what?"
"I can read a little German."
Macready turned to him and spoke eagerly. "Yeah? What's
it say?"
The doctor continued to inspect the papers his lips
moving as he followed the long words. ". . . allgegenwertig
glaci . . ." He broke off and looked up, disappointed. "It's a
tract on the movement of pressure ridges, I'm afraid."
"Wonderful," said, Macready sarcastically. "That's a great
help." Copper carefully aligned the sheets and began adding
selected reams of additional material. The pilot frowned.
"Now what are you doing? Nobody back at base can read
that stuff, either."
"I know." He bent to retrieve a packet of paper bound in
red plastic. "But this could be important work. It looks like
six people have died for it. Might as well bring it back before
it blows away. If the positions were reversed I'd want some
other scientist to do the same for me."
Macready forbore from mentioning that Copper was only
a GP, not a scientist. "Okay," he said impatiently, "but it's
getting late. Hurry it up. I'm going to check out the last few
rooms." He turned and exited.
Copper continued to gather the papers, stacking them
neatly in one arm. Perhaps some Norwegian bureau or
university would be able to make sense of them.
Scattered among the rubble was a pocket tape recorder.
Several cassettes lay strewn across the floor nearby. He
picked one up. It was hand-marked. Unless it was part of
somebody's private collection, that meant it probably
contained scientific notes and not prerecorded music.
Something behind him . . . he whirled. No. Nothing. Easy,
Copper, he told himself. This place is too cold even for
ghosts. He popped one of the tapes into the recorder and
tried fiddling with the controls.
Macready bulled his way into another room and was
greeted with a shower of splinters and cracked ice.
Grumbling, he brushed the debris from his parka as he
angled the flashlight upward. Here too, the ceiling was a
mess. He lowered the light and started inspecting the
interior.
Copper found the playback switch. A casual Norwegian
voice droned away in pedantic, unemotional tones. He fast
forwarded the instrument. The voice was the same and so
was the pattern.
A distant shout broke his concentration: Macready.
"Copper, come here!"
Now what, he wondered? Found the owner of the arm
they'd encountered in the other hall, maybe. He shut off the
recorder and rushed out of the room.
Macready hadn't gone far. Copper had to squeeze his
greater bulk through the narrow opening leading to the next
room and drew more of the dirty little avalanche that had
greeted the pilot's initial entrance.
"Careful," Macready warned him with a gesture toward
the ceiling. "This one's ready to go."
The doctor flicked debris from his arms and walked over
to join his companion. Macready was standing next to a
huge block of ice. A glance showed that it hadn't fallen from
the ceiling. Copper was no geologist, but he'd helped Norris
often enough to know that this mass was composed of old
ice, not newly formed surface material.
Automatically his orderly mind made approximations. The
block was about fifteen feet long and six wide, maybe four
high. It lay on the floor, too massive to rest on any table. The
edges showed signs of recent melting, a process halted by
the freezing temperatures that had invaded the camp.
Other than its size, it was unremarkable. "Block of ice,"
he said to Macready. "So what?"
 Macready leaned over the block, shining his flashlight
downward. "Check this out."
Copper moved nearer. The center of the block had been
thawed or scraped out. It looked as if someone had tried to
make the block into a huge frozen bathtub.
"What d'you make of this?"
Copper shook his head, thoroughly puzzled. "Beats the
hell out of me, Mac. Glaciology's not my department.
Anything else here?"
"Don't know yet. This caught my eye right off." He turned
away from the block, searching with the light until it caught
a large metal cabinet standing against a wall. Closer
inspection revealed several Polaroid prints taped to its front.
They walked over to it. The pictures showed men at work
and play around the compound.
"At least something's intact," he murmured. He put the
shotgun carefully aside and held the flashlight in his mouth
as he used both hands to try to open the cabinet.
The latch gave slightly, but the doors refused to come
apart. Stuck, he decided. Perhaps frozen. He pulled again.
Dust trickled down from the top of the cabinet. The partially
collapsed ceiling was slightly blocking the tops of the doors.
He yanked again. Something groaned overhead.
Copper took a step back, eyeing the roof warily. "Watch it,
Mac."
Macready readied himself, shot a cursory glance at the
unstable ceiling, and pulled hard. Too hard. The doors flew
open and he stumbled backward, fighting for balance.
Large chunks of insulation and wood tumbled from the
roof. Macready coughed and waved at the dust as he made
his way back toward the cabinet.
The contents were a disappointment, not that he'd
expected to find much. His struggle with the doors produced
no revelations. Some of the shelves were empty. Others
supported small scientific instruments, several
programmable calculators, racks of slides, a few unbroken
beakers, and some glass tubing.
His flashlight focused on a large photograph taped to the
inside of one door
Five men filled the picture. They stood arm in arm, all
smiles, holding glasses raised in a mutual toast. It was an
exterior shot, taken somewhere outside the camp.
In front of them on the snow lay the block of ice. The
photo made it appear larger. Perhaps some of it had melted
in transit, Macready decided. It was obviously set out for the
benefit of the camera, though he couldn't decide from
looking at the photo whether the men were toasting it or
each other.
He looked over his shoulder at the block of ice, back at
the photo, then at the ice again. There was no doubt in his
mind that the block in the picture and the one resting five
feet away were one and the same. The dimensions of the
one in the picture might be slightly greater but the
proportions were identical.
He carefully untaped the photo and slipped it into a coat
pocket, then reclosed the cabinet doors.
As he did so more debris tumbled from the ceiling; wood,
plaster, fiberglass insulation, and something else.
Something cold but still soft. Macready screamed; Copper
gaped.
The corpse was missing an arm, but was still heavy
enough to knock Macready down . . .
The howling was sharp and melodic. It penetrated much
of the American compound, reaching the rec room via
connecting corridors and the few speakers inside.
Beneath one of the card tables, the injured husky perked
up his ears. The howling degenerated into lyrics, something
having to do with werewolves in London. Once the howling
had metamorphosed into human speech, the dog shifted its
attention elsewhere.
 Nearby, a ball of light danced across a video screen,
beckoning would-be players to manipulate it. There were no
takers in the room just then and the dog could only trot
disinterestedly past.
The howling was loudest in the kitchen, blasting from a
cassette deck vibrating on a shelf above a multiburner
stove. Nauls skated past, kicking the door of the massive
walk-in freezer shut with spinning steel wheels. The large
chunk of corned beef he'd extracted from the freezer was
slam-dunked onto the big butcher block. Pots and pans
steamed up the air and the aroma filling the room was thick
with pepper and bay leaf.
Nauls rolled easily from one station to another, keeping
time to the music. He used a spoon to sample the contents
of one cauldron, frowned, added something from a couple of
large shakers, then tasted it again. This time he smiled.
He took pride in his work. The station could function
without any of the scientists, without the chopper pilots or
mechanics, without Garry, but it wouldn't run for very long
without Nauls's talents. No sir. Nauls could insult everyone
in camp with impunity. His cooking more than made up for
the offenses committed by his mouth.
Still, there were occasional objections to his irreverence.
Garry peered through an open doorway, grimacing. "Turn
that crap down, Nauls! You can hear it all over the camp."
"Disconnect the hall and rec room speakers."
"More trouble than its worth," the station manager
argued. "Play that junk if you must, but lower it."
Nauls sniffed disdainfully. "Some folks have no
appreciation for culture."
Garry's fingernails tapped on the doorjamb. "Warren
Zevon isn't culture, Nauls. Beethoven is culture. Janácek is
culture. Vaughan Williams is culture."
"Yeah? I hear that 'Antarctica' symphony blaring from
your room one more time, I think I'll go nuts. You want to
hear stuff like that all you got to do is open your window.
Culture just depends on your point of view."
"Well, deafness doesn't. So turn it down."
"Oui, mon sewer. Can do." He skated over to the stereo
and lowered the volume. Slightly.
Garry shook his head and gave up, continuing on his way.
The communications room was next on his agenda. To no
surprise, he found Sanders at his station. Also to no surprise,
the operator was leaning back in his chair, sound asleep. His
headphones were still in place.
Garry tiptoed around the chair and studied the console
briefly before selecting a dial from the mass of controls. He
pushed it all the way to the right.
Violent Static jolted the radio operator awake. He
clutched at his ears, ripping the headphones off.
"Hey, man . . .!" When be saw it was the station manager
his outrage subsided somewhat. "You could deafen
somebody that way."
"It's not any louder than Nauls's stereo. Your sensitivity
could use some tuning."
"I'm sensitive as hell, chief."
"Yeah? You reach anybody yet?"
Sanders explained as if he were talking to a child. "We're
a thousand miles from anybody else, man. You can't pick out
anything through that crap outside." He waved his arms. "If
Bennings is right, it's going to get a helluva lot worse before
it gets better. Now, if we had a geostationary satellite in
range, it'd be easy."
"Well we don't," Garry reminded him. There wasn't much
call for a communications satellite stationed in the spatial
vicinity of the South Pole. He sighed resignedly. "Stick to it.
Keep trying. And let me know the minute you get through to
McMurdo or anywhere else."
"Yeah? Even the Russkies?"
"Anybody. We've got to get the word out about what's
going on here."
 The individual living cubicles all fronted on the same
corridor, a passage wider than most in the compound. The
husky trotted curiously down the empty hall, his tongue
hanging lazily from his mouth.
A single door stood open on his left. The dog halted and
peered inside. The light was dim and there were rustling
sounds.
Casually the animal glanced back up the corridor. It was
still empty. Same for the walkway ahead. He turned and
padded into the room. An indistinct voice greeted him,
surprised.
"Hello, boy."
There was a pause, then the unexpected sound of
breaking glass. Muffled sounds issued from the room, as
though someone were scuffling. The door was slammed shut.
Then it was quiet in the corridor again.
Fuchs was certifiable Most of the others would have
attested to that. The assistant biologist was sensitive,
concerned, friendly, and unassuming. But certifiable.
Because nobody goes jogging in the Antarctic evening.
You jog in Los Angeles despite the smog, in the mountains
around Denver despite the altitude, along the beach south
of Miami, even in New York's Central Park. But you don't jog
in Antarctica.
Well, Fuchs had jogged all his adult life and he was
damned if a little inclement weather was going to make him
break the routine of a lifetime.
So every morning before beginning work he'd bundle up,
put on snow goggles, and jog around the camp, using the
guide ropes where available, keeping sight of a familiar
landmark where they weren't.
Garry had thought of forbidding the practice, but Fuchs
was adamant. And the station manager was forced to admit
there was nothing in the regulations forbidding it.
"It wakes me up," Fuchs continued to insist despite the
derisive hoots of his companions. "Gets the blood flowing."
 "Everywhere but to the brain," Palmer had quipped.
Garry couldn't find it in his heart to order the biologist to
quit. There was little enough entertainment in the camp. If
Fuchs wanted to amuse himself by trying to freeze to death
every morning, well, that was his prerogative.
The only concession to reality the assistant biologist
made was the substitution of winter boots for his jogging
shoes. It slowed his pace if not his enthusiasm.
He came to a halt, panting, his breath freezing in front of
his face. Warm air rose from a vent pipe nearby. He was
standing on top of the kitchen.
Most of the camp's permanent structures were buried
beneath the shifting snow, cut into the frozen ground and
out of the heat-sucking reach of the constant wind.
Stairways led down to home.
Fuchs unlatched a roof entrance, looked around and then
down past the ladder. The corridor was empty, no one was
watching. He assumed a commanding pose.
"Dive, dive!" he muttered, making hornlike sounds, and
started quickly down the ladder, pulling the hatch shut
behind him.
He jogged dawn the corridor toward the central complex.
Off to his right he saw Clark coming out of one of the supply
rooms, rolling a wheelbarrow filled with what looked like
brown pebbles. The dog handler waved cheerfully at the
biologist, trailing dry food in his wake.
The underground kennel was close by. As Fuchs receded
into the distance Clark unlatched the kennel door. As he
rolled the barrow inside, seven sled dogs began jumping at
his legs and onto the load, kicking dry food in all directions.
They yelped and barked eagerly.
Sled dogs had lousy table manners, he mused. They
snapped at each other's flanks and legs, not to injure but to
reestablish dominance roles prior to gorging themselves.
Sometimes Nauls would give Clark kitchen scraps to mix in
with the dry food. Then things really got noisy in the kennel.
 "Take it easy, take it easy!" he shouted at them. "Lord,
what a bunch of chowhounds!" He inspected them as they
settled down to eat, making sure there were no signs of
infection or disease, checking their teeth for breaks or
accumulated plaque.
The men he worked with were okay, but his dogs were
better. They were ever affectionate, did their jobs
unhesitatingly when required, and rarely argued with him. In
return, the sled dogs had conveyed their highest honor on
Clark. They thought of him as one of their own. He was the
lead dog.
Besides which he brought the food.
The storage section, which held the fuel tanks, was older
than the rest of the compound, having been put in place
first. The wood-and-metal supports that held up the roof
there were starting to look rickety. Antarctica put pressure
on metal and wood as steadily as it did on the men who had
to survive there.
Piping and concrete blocks were stacked neatly nearby.
The concrete was special, designed to withstand the cold
without cracking. The blocks were tongue and grooved so
they could be fitted together without mortar.
Doors sealed off other smaller rooms filled with duplicate
electronic gear, duplicate plumbing supplies, duplicate
everything. There was no hardware store a block or two from
Outpost #31. The men had six months of polar winter ahead
of them. They had to be ready to replace anything that
broke down without outside help.
Childs was humming to himself as he entered the main
storage area. He stopped in front of a door that was close to
the massive horizontal fuel tanks. There were six locks of
varying types attached to the door. A couple were
combination jobs, several required keys, and one a magnetic
bar. He opened each one carefully.
The little room behind the door was unusually warm. Heat
flowed from a small radiant heater that looked like a
painting of the American Southwest. Bright fluorescent
lights of slightly purplish hue beamed down from the ceiling.
The room smelled of Wisconsin farmland and Mendocino
coast.
Childs grinned paternally as he inspected the rows of
healthy plants rising from the hydroponic tanks. They had
narrow green leaves with serrated edges. Some of them were
nearly as tall as the mechanic.
He chatted with them as he added nutrients to the metal
tanks, pouring the stuff from a plastic jug. "How my brothers
and sisters doing today? Looks like everyone's doing fine."
He knelt to check the gauges that monitored soil
moisture and pH, checked the thermometer on the wall and
adjusted the heat control slightly. A hum rose from the
radiant heater, warming the mechanic's face. Little light
came through the small skylight overhead.
Turning to a tape deck he selected a well-worn cassette
from the pile next to it and switched the machine on.
"What say to some nice Al Green for my babies, huh?" He
pushed the "on" button.
A high, wailing voice softly filled the little room.
". . . IIIIII cried out . . ." the voice sang agonizingly.
What a waste, that man going and turning to preaching,
Childs thought sadly. He remembered seeing him in L.A. at
the Music Center, in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, singing
on the same stage usually occupied by the Philharmonic. Oh
well. I guess when you get the call, you got to answer.
But how that man could sing. Damn shame.
A new sound reached him above the music, a steady
panting. He whirled, it was only their new visitor, the dog
the crazy Norwegians had been trying to kill.
A thought made the mechanic frown at the animal, who
cocked its head to one side and regarded him querulously.
The bandage was gone from its hip. Probably scraped off
against a wall or piece of furniture, Childs mused. Dogs had
a tendency to do things like that.
 They also had a tendency to do something else, which is
why the mechanic was frowning. He moved toward the dog,
making shooing motions with both hands.
"G'wan, beat it, mutt! You get the hell on out of here!
Scram!" He took a swing at the wet nose.
The dog eyed him reproachfully, then turned and trotted
off. Childs turned back to his garden, grumbling under his
breath.
"Comin' in here . . . goin' to pee on my babies. Damn
dogs, you can't even get away from their dirty at the bottom
of the world." He shut the door carefully behind him and
bent over the burgeoning plants.
"That's my babies." Al Green shifted to another song. "Be
all grown pretty soon. All nice and green and healthy. And
then me and my babies going to have a nice, long smoke . .
."
Blair's gaze was fixed on the chart he was carrying as he
strolled down the corridor. Preoccupied, he nearly fell as his
feet got tangled in something unseen.
"What the . . .?" He bent, picked up a torn, shredded
piece of stained bandage. "Well shit," he muttered, looking
around for its owner. But the husky was nowhere to be seen.
Have to mention it to Clark, he thought as he resumed his
walk. Dog'll bleed all over the place. Shouldn't worry too
much, though. The exposed wound was unlikely to draw
infection. Germs didn't last very long inside the compound,
and those that attached themselves to the men died quickly
once exposed to the outside. Antarctica was a difficult place
to get sick, so long as you were careful not to catch cold.
The generator whined steadily down in the lower level,
keeping men and equipment in working order, fighting back
the constant cold with light and warmth.
Palmer was probing its driving mechanisms, trying to
locate possible failure points ahead of time. Normal
maintenance. A rising whine made him frown, until he pulled
his head away from the interior and recognized the sound as
coming from outside. Helicopter blades fighting with the
wind.
A loud crash sounded close by. Screwdrivers and probes
spilled across the floor as the tool box banged against the
planks. The husky had jumped onto Palmer's work table and
knocked the box over. The dog stood panting atop the table,
trying to peer out the narrow window just below the ceiling,
its forepaws resting on the little ledge there.
Palmer cursed softly and got to his feet, and started to
gather up his tools, replacing them carefully in the box. He
yelled toward the open doorway.
"Hey, Clark! Will you kennel this goddamn dog? If he's
healthy enough to jump up on tables he's sure as hell
healthy enough to join his cousins!" When no reply was
forthcoming he picked up a wrench and started banging
against a pipe running toward the kennel. "Hey, Clark!"
The dog ignored him, pawing at the window as it stared
out at the arriving chopper.
The helicopter jiggled unsteadily in the wind, finally
settling on the pad near its mate and the bulldozer. Childs
and Sanders were waiting for it.
As soon as the steady whup-whup of the rotors had
slowed sufficiently they came running toward the craft, bent
over against the wind, hauling guy wires behind them.
Childs snapped one hook onto the link welded to the
copter's tail while Sanders did the same near the cockpit.
Macready was out quickly, assisting them.
"What'd you find?" Childs bellowed at him through the
gale. The wind was picking up again. It bit at the mechanic's
exposed cheeks.
Macready appeared not to hear him. Childs snapped on
another guy wire, attaching it to the side of the copter. It
sang in the wind as he moved closer to the pilot.
"Hey, Mac. I asked you what—" He broke off as Macready
turned to face him. The pilot's anguished expression was
eloquence enough for Childs.
 "Later," Macready mumbled. Childs stared into his
friend's face and just nodded.
 The science staff had crowded into Garry's quarters. The
station manager's room was somewhat larger than the
others, but the atmosphere was still claustrophobic.
There was initial concern that the Norwegian videotape
wouldn't play back on the camp monitors because of the
difference in broadcast signals used by U.S. and European
stations. The concern had turned out to be well founded.
At first try the screen had displayed only intense visual
static and aural mush. But Sanders was able to transfer the
tape via the station's own elaborate video equipment and
come up with one that put out a signal the camp monitors
could read.
The result wasn't perfect, but at least it was viewable.
The picture was grainy and faint and there was no sound. No
one commented on the video as it unspooled.
Whoever had operated the video camera was no Victor
Seastrom. The picture weaved and tilted, occasionally
blurred by overexposure, darkened by under. Not that they
seemed to be missing anything of importance.
There were numerous, matter-of-fact shots of the
Norwegian team at work, a long sequence of them playing
soccer out on the ice, shots of the cook preparing meals, of
men playing chess, of day-to-day life. Which was to say, long
stretches of tape boring to look at.
Norris was barely paying attention to the monitor. He was
devoting his attention instead to the thick bundle of notes
Dr. Copper had hauled back to camp.
"Seems they were spending a lot of time at a place four
miles northeast of their compound."
Blair looked questioningly at him. "And when did you
start reading Norwegian?"
 Norris threw him a thin smile. "About the same time I
mastered Xhosa." He tapped the uppermost sheet of paper.
"There are maps in here. The notations are in Norwegian, but
the topographic features are the same. A contour line's a
contour line in any language. And of course the math is the
same, once you convert the metrics."
"Oh. Right," said Blair subsiding.
"Any indication of what they were involved in? asked the
station manager.
Macready was fiddling with the video monitor, trying to
improve the picture and failing miserably.
"Lots of manuals and pictures scattered around the
place," Norris told Garry. "Indications of ice-core drilling,
seismology, glaciology, microbial biology. Same old shit we
do."
Snatches of a rowdy song burst suddenly from the
monitor's speaker as the scene on screen shifted from
someone at work by a laboratory bench to an unsteady shot
of a bunch of naked Norwegians holding a sign in front of
their waists as they stood outside their camp in super-
freezing weather. Several held artifacts common to every
contemporary culture, though the brand of beer was
unknown to the disgusted watchers. The sign itself was
incomprehensible. In all likelihood it contained nothing of
enduring scientific value.
Bennings turned away from the TV, muttering
disgustedly. "How much more of this down-on-the-farm crap
is there?"
"If Sanders's timing is right," Macready told him, "about
nine more hours."
The meteorologist shook his head. It was hot and crowded
in the room and he had important work to do. "We can't
learn anything from this."
Copper nodded reluctant agreement. "You're probably
right. Maniacs don't usually think to turn video cameras on
themselves while they're in the process of going crackers."
He glanced over at the station manager.
"All right. Mac, kill it." The pilot shut off the video deck
and the television, and disconnected the patch cord linking
them. Garry looked back over at the doctor. "You two find
anything else?"
"Maybe," Copper replied. He nodded to Macready, who
took a small, battered tape deck from his pocket and handed
it over to the doctor.
"Macready and I were listening to some of these cassettes
on the flight back from the Norwegian camp. I'd like the rest
of you gentlemen to hear this particular one." He gave the
"play" switch a nudge.
A Scandinavian voice filled the room. It was flat, calm,
methodical; the boredom apparent despite distance, time
and even a different language.
Norris let out a bored sigh. "Sounds like the verbal
equivalent of the tape we've been mooning over. Hours of
notes and nonsense."
"What do you want from us?" Bennings wanted to know.
Macready gestured for them to be patient. "Just listen. We
thought the same way you do . . . at first."
Copper played with the fast-forward control, eyeing the
built-in tape counter as the machine squealed. At five-oh-
one he stopped the racing cassette and depressed "play" a
second time. The calm voice was heard again.
Then something sounded dull, loud, and ugly, as though
a distant explosion had taken place. The little machine's
omnidirectional internal microphone wasn't large, but there
was no mistaking that sharp cruuumppp from the speaker.
A pounding noise followed the explosion. There were
shouts, some near, some faraway. Then echoes of confusion,
of equipment being tipped over, of glass shattering.
Running feet grew loud, fading as their owners moved away
from the recorder.
 Something went thunk and the volume intensified, as if
the recorder had been hit or thrown against something hard.
Feet sounded close by, banging wooden planks.
A violent gurgling rose above the general cacophony,
then a loud hiss like a steam boiler shutting down. Men
screamed and raged in Norwegian.
Then a piercing screech that made the hair on Norris's
neck stand erect. Several explosions next, like cannon firing
in the distance. The execrable screeching again, louder now,
mixed with the howls of distraught, panicky men.
Copper noted the grim expressions on the faces of those
gathered around him. He derived no satisfaction from the
effect the tape had on them. Soon all sound stopped. The
tape had come to its end. He switched the machine off and
regarded his companions in silence.
"That's it?" Fuchs asked softly.
Copper shook his head. "No. It's a split tape with
automatic rewind. It goes on like that from the beginning of
the second half for quite a while." He let that sink in before
asking, "What do you gentlemen make of it? Neither
Macready nor I could make any sense out of it."
"Could be anything," Garry suggested. "Men in isolation
are subject to pressures the psych boys don't always plan
for. Could be the result of some beef that snowballed, got
out of hand. Some little thing; an argument over a soccer
score, ownership of a magazine . . . we've no way of
knowing.
"Something else, too," he added speculatively. "These
guys weren't here very long. Usually serious psychological
differences among crews show up in the first couple of
months or wait until the end of a year's stay."
"Yeah," agreed Copper, "but the differences usually don't
end in homicide."
"Maybe it wasn't just mental," Norris ventured. "Maybe
their whole camp got bent out of shape from some other
cause. Something they ate, maybe." He looked over at
Copper. "What about it, Doc? Could some kind of food
poisoning make 'em go crazy like that?"
The physician mulled over Norris's theory. "It's not
impossible." His eyes went back to the now quiescent tape
deck. He recalled the screams, the sense of panic it had
recorded. "Many men play around with mild hallucinogens
during their duty tours. It's a good time to experiment.
There's not really anyone around to arrest them. We do it
ourselves. Take Palmer, for example."
Fuchs defended the absent pilot. "Palmer's still flaky from
all the acid he dropped back in the sixties. These days he
doesn't touch anything stronger than sensimilla. At least, as
far as I know he doesn't."
"I know he doesn't," said the doctor soothingly. "His
monthly checkups show that. None of us fiddle with
dangerous stuff. But just because we don't doesn't mean
these Norwegians didn't get into something heavy. If you've
the time and inclination and a little chemical know-how you
can whip up all kinds of cute goodies in the simplest of
labs."
"Yeah, like what?" asked Norris, with mock enthusiasm. It
drew forth a few long-absent chuckles from his neighbors.
Copper smiled with them, but only for a moment. His
mien quickly turned somber again. "There's something else
we want you to see." He exited Garry's quarters, the others
trailing curiously behind him.
The portable surgical table gleamed in the middle of the
infirmary. Macready and Copper went to a corner and lifted a
heavy-duty plastic sack between them. The contents were
dumped unceremoniously onto the table.
"Besides the papers, the videotapes, and the cassettes,
we also found this," Copper told them.
The mess on the table had once been a man. It was badly
charred and broken, but that wasn't what drew the instant
attention of the onlookers.
 What remained of the trousers and shoes were ripped
lengthwise and split into long shreds, as though the legs and
feet they normally concealed had suddenly grown five sizes
too large for them and had burst the seams from within. The
upper torso was an almost unrecognizable gnarly mass of
indistinctly formed protoplasmic mush.
There were no visible arms; just lumps of dark goo and
flesh flanking the chest region. The head was oddly
disfigured and looked larger than normal. Its location was far
more disconcerting than its appearance. It seemed to be
growing out of the stomach. There was nothing atop the
shoulders, or where the shoulders ought to have been.
Peculiar appendages that resembled loose tendons were
wrapped around the carcass like white rope. The ends stuck
out to the sides at odd angles, stiff and hard as plastic.
They'd reminded Copper of vines climbing the walls of a
hothouse, save for their color. One circled repeatedly around
the body's left leg like the striping on a barber pole. Another
was wrapped securely around the misplaced skull.
Scattered colorfully amid the goo-like morass of the chest
area were torn fragments of a shirt, like feathers protruding
from tar.
Fuchs turned away for a moment, but no one threw up.
None of them, not even the usually unflappable Garry, was
unaffected by the viscous grotesquerie, but the corpse was
too far removed from humankind to affect them intimately. It
was a specimen, like Norris's rock samples or Blair's tubes
full of aerial bacteria. It was too bizarre, too distorted to
connect with any of the grinning, beer-guzzling figures
they'd seen in the salvaged photographs from the
Norweigian camp.
"I know it's pretty badly burned," Copper finally muttered
into the aghast silence, "but could a fire have done all this?
At high temperatures human bodies burn. They don't . . .
melt."
 Sickened but fascinated, Blair poked at the tendonlike
growths and the asphaltic goo. Some of the liquid came
away on his fingers and he hastily wiped it off on his pants
leg.
"Curious, isn't it?" Copper asked him.
Blair grimaced. "I don't know what to say. Never seen
anything like it, Hope I never do again."
"I'd like for you and Fuchs to help me with the autopsies
on this one and the man Garry had to shoot this morning."
"If you insist, Doe." The senior biologist looked unhappy.
"But I'm not volunteering."
"You don't have to volunteer," Garry informed him curtly.
"I'll make it official." He nodded toward the carcass. "This is
your department."
"I'm not sure this is anybody's department," the biologist
replied, still wiping his fingers on his trousers. The damn
stuff had the tenacity of a black glue. He turned to begin the
necessary preparations. He'd assisted Copper before,
Outpost #31 not being large enough to rate a nurse, but this
time he felt like going on sick call himself.
"If it's any consolation, Blair," said the doctor, "I'm not
looking forward to this either. But it's got to be done."
"Yeah, I know." Blair was removing pans from a locker. "So
let's quit talking about it and do it. The sooner we start, the
sooner we'll be done with it."
Fuchs was the only one who might have volunteered to
help. He was examining the body with care, growing interest
having replaced his initial queasiness.
The rec room was always the busiest in the compound.
Unlike the scientists, the maintenance personnel had a
considerable amount of free time. Their expertise was only
required during emergencies, normal checkout procedures
usually taking only four or five hours a day. They spent the
remainder of their days relaxing with a ferocity only the truly
isolated can appreciate.
 Tiny wooden figures spun on metal poles, furiously
manipulated by Nauls and Clark. The football game they
were playing was badly battered, the paint scratched, the
legs bent by frustrated kicks, the rubber grips missing from
several of the control bars. Dog handler and cook were going
at it hot and heavy.
Sanders relaxed in a corner on one of the old, beat-up,
thoroughly comfortable couches. He was thumbing through
an old issue of Playboy, whistling to himself and wishing, as
usual, that he was somewhere else. Anywhere else. A table
and chairs were occupied by Bennings, Norris, the station
manager, and a deck of dirty cards.
"Take two," said Garry, placing a pair face down on the
table. Bennings obediently dealt him a couple, then gave
one to Norris and three to himself. Garry studied the new
cards, found that he now held an ace, a four, a deuce, one
king, and one queen. Terrific.
Something nudged him under the table, then moved off
to irritate Bennings. Judging from the meteorologist's tone
as he responded to the interruption, he hadn't done any
better on the draw than Garry.
He looked over toward the frenetic football game. "Clark,
will you put this mutt with the others where he belongs!
We're trying to play poker here!"
Clark exchanged a knowing look with Nauls, walked over
and bent to look under the table.
"That's all right, boy," he said coaxingly to the husky, "it's
all right. Nobody's going to hurt you. Come on now." He
reached under and grasped the animal by the ruff around its
neck. It submitted docilely to the grip.
Clark gently tugged the dog out from beneath the table
and started walking it toward the door. As they passed the
irritated Bennings, the handler glanced over his shoulder.
"Trying to play poker is right . . . drawing to an inside
straight."
 Bennings made a rude noise and threw his cards at Clark,
who ducked and hurried out the door, the dog trotting easily
alongside him.
The lab was larger than most of the nonstorage rooms at
the outpost and was well equipped, in contrast to the
regularly abused contents of the recreation room. Glass
tubes and beakers gleamed beneath bright fluorescents. The
steel sink shone argent. Even the floor was relatively clean.
Copper was working at the center table. His gloves were
stained dark red. The other body lay nearby, draped with a
white sheet and awaiting its turn. The corpse Copper was
working on, or rather in, was that of the berserk gunman
who'd invaded the compound earlier that morning and
attacked Bennings and Norris.
Blair hunched over a microscope, studying on slide while
Fuchs carefully prepared a fresh one. The assistant biologist
utilized scalpel and tweezers and stain with all the skill of
someone repairing a fine watch.
Copper wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of a
forearm as he turned away from the body, which was already
beginning to ripen in the warm air of the lab. He pulled off
the stained gloves and tossed them into the nearly laundry
bin.
"Nothing wrong with this one," he announced to his two
co-workers. "Physiologically, anyway." He let out a tired
breath and glanced at Blair. "Have any luck?"
"Not so far."
"Nothing toxic?"
Blair stood away from the eyepiece he'd been staring
through and blinked at the doctor. "No drugs, no alcohol, no
inimical intestinal bacteria. Nothing. Everything you've
excavated checks out as normal."
Copper pursed his lips and nodded. He opened a drawer
and took out a clean pair of the disposable surgical gloves.
His gaze shifted to the strangely distorted humanoid mess
lying beneath the white sheet.
 "Fuchs, leave the slides for a minute and give me a hand
here. Let's switch these around."
"You're getting healthy enough to make a nuisance of
yourself, boy," Clark told the husky as he led it through the
long, cold tunnel leading to the kennel. After removing him
from the rec room the handler had carefully placed a new
bandage and dressing on the animal's injured hip.
"You've got to understand, to most of the guys you're just
another piece of camp machinery. Machinery ain't allowed to
intervene in camp activity, especially card playing." He
ruffled the dog's head between the ears. It licked his hand
appreciatively.
"You're okay in my book, though. Maybe we can get you
assigned here permanently. I don't think the Norwegian
government would object. You'll have to learn to stick with
your buddies, though." He unlatched the kennel door and
walked the husky inside.
The kennel was a metal box some twenty feet long and
five wide. It was not well lit and smelled powerfully despite
the presence of the dog door at the far end, which gave
access to a ramp leading outside. The dogs used it, but the
box still smelled. The canine miasma didn't trouble the
handler, however. He was used to it.
Some of the sled dogs were sleeping, curled up against
each other for extra warmth. The kennel was heated, but not
to the extent the rest of the outpost was. Too much heat
would have been unhealthy for the animals.
Two of them lapped at the section of metal drum that
served as a watering trough. Another was nibbling at the
pile of dried food the handler had dumped into the kennel
earlier. Others rose at his entrance, stretched lazily and
rubbed against his legs. Two sniffed curiously at their new
companion.
Clark patted the husky, and greeted several of the other
dogs. "Nanook, Archangel, meet . . . well, we'll find a name
for you one of these days, fella." He urged the new dog
forward. "Now you make friends." He addressed the others as
they all slowly began to gather around.
"Lobo, Buck . . . the rest of you make our visitor feel at
home, you hear?"
He gave the newcomer a last, reassuring pat, then turned
and left, latching the door behind him. He stood there,
listening. No growls or snarls sounded from the other side of
the door. Then he left, satisfied that the new animal would
adapt successfully to his new surroundings and they to him.
Sled dogs were very adaptable.
Childs lay in bed in his room, staring at the color portable
screwed to the wall. On the screen a housewife was trying to
guess the price of a new washer/dryer combo. The
announcer and audience combined to make it seem like a
matter of life and death instead of ring-around-the-collar.
Childs didn't give a damn for game shows, but this one
was different. Each man could put in requests for
videotapes, going down the list that the regular supply
flights could bring down from the States. Most of the men
requested football games, new movies, situation comedies.
Childs always asked for this particular game show, to the
consternation of the supply clerk at Wellington. But he got
his tapes.
Everyone at the base assumed this preference had
something to do with nostalgia and, in truth, Childs had
religiously watched this particular game show back in
Detroit. He watched because whoever selected the
contestants from the audience always managed to choose a
steady stream of dynamite-looking ladies.
Childs got more pleasure from watching them win stereos
and cameras and trips to Bermuda than he did the tired
actresses who populated the porn tapes that were also
available. These were real women, and they weren't acting.
He enjoyed watching the pretty women from Phoenix and
New York and Muncie bounce gleefully around the stage in
genuine delight far more than he did the moans and groans
of thirty-year-old blondes trying to act eighteen.
The lady currently on screen won the washer/dryer, and
jiggled delightedly across the stage to claim her prize.
Childs raised himself up and leaned over to switch off the
VCR. He'd already seen this particular tape.
Time to go on to something new. He ran his eyes down
the tape box, selected another tape and inserted it into the
player, thumbing the "play" control.
This time the object of the game was to roll oversized
dice on a crap table to win money and a chance at
merchandise. The lissome dark lady currently gambling
happily with the network's money was built like a hot night
in August. Childs leaned back against the headboard and
wondered why all the fine fillies were already married.
Palmer was stretched out on the cot opposite the
mechanic, reading. The sound from the television didn't
bother him. Not much could bother him when he was
smoking. He alternated cultivating duties with Childs at
their semisecret little "farm." Last season's harvest had been
particularly fine. Pungent smoke drifted through the room.
Childs beckoned to him and Palmer handed the joint
across. The big mechanic took a couple of hits and mentally
urged the game show director to go to an overhead shot,
while Palmer returned to the cerebral stimulation afforded
by the collected works of that renowned philosopher, Gilbert
Shelton.
Macready sat alone in the pub, staring at the television
monitor there. He was sipping the drink he'd mixed for
himself.
The pub was actually a large metal storage crate. One
side had been cut away and the interior decorated with
shelves and bottle holders. The elegant wine list, a product
of Norris's talented calligraphy, listed twelve different kinds
of beer from Foster's Lager (Australian) to Dos Equis
(Mexican) to the rare Hinano, brewed in Tahiti. There were
also bottles containing darker and more potent liquids.
A Hamms beer sign hung at a crooked angle from the
back wall of the pub, its sky-blue waters running downhill
from a never-ending mechanical lake. Macready wiped his
lips and took another slug of his drink.
He was forcing himself to run through every foot of
videotape he and Copper had salvaged from the Norwegian
camp. Thus far their contents had been unalterably boring.
There were endless scenes of men at work, horseplay, the
taking of ice samples, the recording of information. In other
words, scenes of all the usual day-to-day activities you'd
expect to see at such a station.
Worse, the cameraman was no Abel Gance, Macready told
himself ruefully. The picture tended to be out of focus much
of the time, and bobbed and weaved so that his eyes
throbbed and his head ached as he forced himself to watch.
It was the very sameness of those tapes that troubled him
and kept him at it. There was nothing on any of them to hint
that any of the men depicted at work or play stood on the
verge of a mental breakdown. They all appeared perfectly
normal, and the fact that he couldn't understand a word
they were saying did nothing to alter that evaluation.
Of course, a violent breakdown could occur suddenly and
without any outward manifestation of internal trouble on the
part of the disturbed. Copper had reiterated that point when
the pilot had queried him about it.
Also previously discussed was the unlikelihood of a
candidate for treatment displaying his symptoms for the
benefit of the probing camera. But Macready continued to
stare blearily at the tapes in the faint hope of discovering
something revealing, some clue to what might have
disrupted the placid daily routine of the Norwegian camp. It
was hard going. Already he was on his third drink.
Blair hovered over the microscope. He put a new slide
under the clips, examined it carefully, and frowned. Pulling
away, he rubbed his eyes, then pressed the right one to the
eyepiece for a second look.
"Doc. Come here a second."
Copper walked over and took the biologist's place at the
instrument as Blair stepped aside. The doctor gazed at the
slide for a long time, then stood back and shrugged.
"I don't understand. What's that supposed to be?" he
said, gesturing at the microscope and its contents.
By way of reply Blair stepped around him and walked
over to the badly disfigured corpse, which now lay on the
center table. As Copper followed him, Fuchs took the
opportunity to look into the microscope.
Blair indicated one of the stiff, tendonlike growths that
protruded from the central mass of dark, viscous material
and partially dissolved flesh, then pointed back toward the
microscope.
"It's tissue from one of these sinewy rods."
Copper accepted that. "What did you stain it with?"
"Nothing." He looked over to his assistant.
Fuchs glanced back at them, as thoroughly befuddled by
what he saw through the eyepiece as his associates were.
"What in the world kind of cell structure is this?"
"Precisely my point," Blair said grimly.
"You posed a question, not a point."
"Can't they be the same?"
Copper interrupted the two scientists. "I don't follow you,
Blair. What are you trying to say?"
"That I'm not sure it's any kind of cell structure.
Biologically speaking."
"If it's a tissue sample, there has to be cell structure,"
said Copper.
"Does there?"
"If there isn't, then the material is inorganic."
"Is it?"
"You can't have organic material devoid of cell structure,"
the doctor added exasperatedly.
 "Can't you?"
Copper gave up. "Look, this really isn't my field, Blair. I'm
a simple GP. I do my best to repair the known, not decipher
the exotic. Let's wrap it up for the day. I'm tired of cutting."
"So am I," added Fuchs wholeheartedly.
Copper unbuttoned his coat, which was no longer clean
and white but instead resembled a Jackson Pollock canvas.
He tossed it into the laundry bin on his way out the door.
Fuchs followed him, disposing of his gloves. His lab coat was
still relatively elean.
Blair held back, returning to his desk to take one last look
through the microscope. The peculiar pattern under the
eyepiece hadn't changed, hadn't in the absence of attention
metamorphosed into something comfortingly familiar.
Copper's confusion was understandable.
The biologist was badly mixed up himself.
The weather had warmed slightly and the blowing snow
melted a little faster when it struck something warm. It
battered the outpost and spanged off the corrugated metal
walls of the shed.
Inside the main compound, monitors kept the hallways
and rooms pleasantly warm and moist. The humidifier was a
necessity. It was a paradox that, despite the presence of
frozen water everywhere, the air of Antarctica was bitingly
dry. Chapped skin was a constant problem and Copper was
always prescribing something for it.
After every shower the men oiled themselves as
thoroughly as they did their machines, because the
cascading hot water washed away body oils that were only
slowly replaced. Dandruff was an irritatingly persistent, if
not serious problem.
The wall clocks in the complex read four-thirty. Only
night-lights illuminated the corridors and storage areas, the
empty rec room, and the deserted kitchen. Snoring issued
softly from behind closed doors. Sleep came easily in the
white land.
 Only one section was still occupied. As dazed as he was
determined, Macready sat in the little pub and continued
staring at the television screen. He was on the last of the
Norwegian videotapes.
At the moment he was keeping one eye on the screen
while inflating a roughly irregular flesh-toned balloon. This
mysterious object soon took on the crude outline of a life-
sized woman. Macready's wind was weak and he was having
a hard time of it. His polyethylene paramour's proportions
fluctuated with his unsteady breathing.
Something on the tape caught his attention and he
stopped suddenly. Holding the filler tube clamped shut with
one hand he reached up and hit the reverse. Pictures
streaked the wrong way like a bad movie until he touched
"play" again. He squinted at the screen.
There were the Norwegians again, working against a pale
sky. No blowing snow obscured the picture. They were
dressed for heavy outdoor work.
As he watched they separated and spread out. The
picture momentarily showed waving sky as the cameraman
changed his position without turning off the camera. When it
steadied again it showed the team of foreign researchers
standing on flat, wind-scoured ice. Their arms were
outstretched toward one another as if they were trying to
measure something.
Within the circumference of their outstretched arms was
a huge, dark stain on the ice. The perimeter they'd formed
with their bodies encompassed only one small section of a
sweeping curve.
That was what had attracted Macready's faltering
attention. The dark stain seemed to lie beneath the surface
rather than on top of it.
The picture went to black, then came to life again. He
could hear the Norwegians mumbling in the background.
The location hadn't changed but time had passed. In the
background the sky showed blue rather than white. The
Norwegians could be seen moving around the dark, roughly
oval shape. They had its boundaries clearly marked off with
little flags set on ice probes.
Again the scene faded. When the picture returned
Macready found himself watching three men with ice drills
boring holes in a little triangle above the center of the dark
oval. The camera swayed as its operator moved in close to
shoot downward.
Black, then picture again. The camera was shooting down
into a large hole in the ice. Something dark and metallic
showed at the bottom. Macready leaned closer, now more
than slightly curious.
The next sequence showed the men using the drills to
sink small, widely scattered holes into the ice at various
points above the oval, using new flags as positioning marks.
Others moved around the drill sites, working on their hands
and knees with small boxes.
Macready frowned, mumbling to himself. "Too much to
drill out. Decanite, maybe? Or thermite charges?"
The next time the picture cleared the little flags were
hanging limply from their staffs. The view was from far away
and there wasn't a Norwegian in sight. Several small
explosions kicked up clouds of powdered ice, confirming the
pilot's guess as to what the men on their knees had been
doing while temporarily obscuring the view of the oval.
Suddenly the view yawed wildly. Something rumbled over
the monitor. Then the camera seemed to be thrown through
the air as a tremendous explosion strained the bass range of
the television's tiny speaker. A startled Macready jumped
out of the chair. Suddenly he was awake.
"What in . . ."
The tape continued to play, the picture now badly
distorted, showing only white ground. A jagged dark line ran
the length of the picture. It took Macready a couple of
seconds to realize that the line represented a crack in the
camera lens.
 Forgetting his airy companion, Macready jabbed the
rewind button. The rejected mannequin went sputtering
around the pub until it ran out of air and crumpled limply on
the floor.
It was as quiet in the kennel as in the rest of the outpost.
Perhaps quieter, for none of the sled dogs snored.
Not all of them were asleep. A few lounged lazily in
corners and against companions—licking paws, yawning,
scratching their backs against the hard floor, or simply
gazing out of half-lidded eyes at nothing in particular.
Only one of them was fully awake. The bandage was
missing from the husky's hip again. It studied its somnolent
companions with quiet intensity.
After several minutes of this it trotted over to a cluster of
five dogs, sat down in front of them and continued its
uncharacteristically intense watch, more catlike than canine.
Gradually the five dogs became aware . . . of something. One
moaned. They began to awaken, aware that something
peculiar was in their midst. An uncertain whine came from a
second animal as it rolled to it feet.
None of this activity altered the posture of the kennel's
most recent arrival. It continued to sit motionless and stare
at the others. Its back was abnormally rigid. It did not pant.
And there was something else, something more. The
other dogs were aware of it only as a barely sensed
unpleasantness in the stranger's stare, a not-rightness. A
man would have noticed it immediately.
The new dog no longer possessed pupils. The eyes had
become solid, lusterless black spheres.
Bewildered, several of those subjected to this unflinching
gaze started to pace the kennel floor. As yet, they were still
more confused than frightened. Several began to growl at
the newcomer.
Still the new dog remained frozen in place. The growling
around it began to get louder. Several of the other dogs
awoke and started to join in the pacing and grumbling. They
instinctively began circling the stranger. Growls turned to
angry, frustrated snarls. This newcomer was not reacting as
a proper dog should. The lack of any kind of response was
beginning to infuriate the other inhabitants of the kennel.
One barked at the husky, then a second. The circling
became faster, the growling more frenzied. With one mind,
three of the pacing animals stopped circling and turned to
face the stranger. They jumped it simultaneously.
A fascinated and thoroughly absorbed Macready was
running through the footage immediately preceding the
violent explosion and subsequent shattering of the camera
lens when the far-off clamor from the kennel reached him.
Reluctantly he dragged himself away from the monitor, after
shutting it down with the freeze-frame control, and stalked
out of the pub.
It was silent in the deserted corridor as he made his way
toward the sleeping rooms, silent save for the constant din
the dogs were raising. He stopped outside one of the
cubicles. The door was unlocked and he let himself in.
Clark lay beneath light blankets on his back, snoring.
Macready hesitated, listening. If anything the dogs sounded
more upset now than when he'd left the pub.
"Clark. Hey Clark."
There was no response. Macready moved close to the bed
and reached down to nudge the handler's arm. Annoyed,
Clark turned onto his side and pulled the blankets higher
around his shoulders.
Macready reached over and pinched the handler's
nostrils, cutting off his air. That made Clark sit up quickly. He
blinked at the intruder, too groggy to be really mad.
"What's the idea, Mac? What's up?"
"Can't you hear?" Macready jabbed a finger toward the
doorway. The cacophony from the kennel was clearly
audible. "Dogtown's going nuts. I was up and it didn't bother
me, but if you let those mutts wake everybody, the rest of
the guys will make dog food out of you. Take care of it."
 "Well, hell." Clark swung his legs out of the bed, bent
over and rubbed his eyes as Macready disappeared into the
corridor. Having discharged his responsibility, the pilot was
anxious to get back to the videotape.
Clark fumbled for his pants. He liked his animals, but
sometimes even the best sled teams could be a pain. High-
strung creatures, the slightest argument was enough to set
the whole bunch of them off. A fight over who was going to
be lead dog, over a particular morsel of food, over anything
except mating privileges (all the females were spayed) was
enough to send them into mindless frenzy.
He didn't mind that and wasn't surprised when it
happened. It was the nature of sled dogs. But did they have
to prove it at five in the morning? He had to break it up of
course, and not just because the noise might interrupt
someone's beauty sleep. The dogs were valuable. Childs and
Palmer and Macready took care of their machines. It was up
to Clark to take care of his four-legged ones.
The heat in the corridor was automatically turned down
during sleeping periods. His bed-warmed body protested at
being dragged out so early. You could hear the wind
whistling hungrily overhead.
Sleepy and annoyed, he turned a corridor corner that
faced the kennel. The noise from within was louder now,
much louder than he'd expected. He hurried toward the
door. It sounded like tapes he'd heard of sled dogs attacking
a bear.
Confused, he fumbled tiredly with the door, slipping the
latch. "Now what's got into—"
Just as the door opened something hit him in the chest
hard enough to send him staggering backward, his arms
flailing for balance. He felt the same way he had one
summer afternoon when Childs had accidentally blind-sided
him during a game of touch iceball. The breath was knocked
out of him as his diaphragm was compressed.
 The two dogs who'd struck him got to their feet slowly
and dragged themselves back into the kennel whimpering.
From within there came a roaring straight from hell, a
grotesque symphony of barks and snarls, growls and frantic
whining.
And an unearthly screeching . . .
 Macready was in the kitchen, having made a detour prior
to returning to the pub and the waiting videotape. He had
the big refrigerator open and was taking out a couple of
beers to replenish the bar's stock when the far-off wailing
reached him.
For an instant he stood there, frozen by the eerie sound,
shocked into listening. Then he turned and sprinted out of
the kitchen, forgetting to close the refrigerator door.
He used a beer can to smash the glass exterior of the fire
alarm out in the hall, reached inside heedless of the broken
glass still adhering to the box and pulled hard on the lever.
Bells began to ring throughout the camp, startlingly loud in
the silent, insulated corridors.
Macready and Norris followed the station manager and
Clark toward the kennel. Macready carried a shotgun from
the small armory while Garry hefted his Magnum. None of
them were fully dressed. Clark carried a fire axe.
"I don't know what the hell's in there," he was telling
them as they moved forward, "but it's weird and loud and
pissed off, whatever it is. Sure as hell ain't no dog."
"What makes you so sure of that?" Garry asked him.
Clark's voice was solemn. "I've worked with animals most
of my life, chief. No dog ever made a sound like that."
Far behind them, the hallway outside the sleeping
cubicles was rapidly filling up with the rest of the outpost's
personnel. Men stumbled half-naked into each other, into
doors, hopping on one foot as they tried to shove the other
hastily into pants' legs. Feet were jammed into shoes,
heedless of possible damage to heels. The peaceful night
had turned into a violent morning of confusion.
 Childs was fighting with his belt buckle, which refused to
tighten. He still wasn't fully awake. Bennings shouted at him
from a nearby doorway.
"Mac wants what?" The camp's chief mechanic sought
clarification.
"That's what he said. And he wants it now." Bennings
whirled and vanished up the corridor before Childs could
think to question him further.
Clark and his armed companions approached the kennel
door. After the two dogs had come flying out at him the
handler had reflexively thrown himself against the half-
opened door and relocked it. Garry eyed him questioningly.
"I couldn't think of anything else to do," the handler told
him. "And in any case, I didn't want to try anything by
myself."
The two dogs who'd been locked out were barking
hysterically as they clawed at the steel door in frantic
attempts to get back into the fight. One of them was badly
bloodied, and not from the collision with Clark.
The melee continued unabated inside, the noise giving
the shivers to the men standing outside.
Garry reached for the handle, then hesitated. "How do
you want to handle this? This is your department."
"I'm not sure it's anybody's department anymore," Clark
replied. "You and Norris hang onto these two." He indicated
the impatient dogs. "Macready and I will flank the opening.
If nothing comes out, we'll go in."
Garry mulled it over briefly, then nodded agreement. He
and Norris each grabbed a dog by the collar and wrestled
them away from the door. Macready took up a position to the
right of the doorway, readied the shotgun and looked tense.
Where the hell was Childs?
Clark moved to the other side and put a hand on the
latch. He looked over at the pilot. "Ready?" Mac thought of a
sarcastic reply, bit it back and nodded affirmatively. The
handler gave the other two a glance, saw that they were too
busy trying to control the raging dogs to comment.
Clark took a deep breath and flipped open the latch. The
heavy door swung outward. The noise inside the kennel was
deafening. When nothing showed itself he nodded to
Macready. The two men entered side by side.
The interior light had burnt out or been broken. It was
coldly, unexpectedly dark. Macready cradled the shotgun
and snapped on a flashlight, but before he could shine it
around the chamber something hit him from behind and
knocked him sprawling.
The moment the two men disappeared inside, the two
dogs had broken free of Norris and Garry. Unused to
handling anything as powerful as a sled dog, Norris had
gone flat on his face. One of the dogs had raced up against
Macready's legs and upended him.
"Mac, where are you!" Clark was shouting. If anything,
the decibel level of the snarling and screeching and howling
they'd stepped into had doubled.
"Here, dammit!" The pilot lay on the floor, groping for his
flashlight. It had rolled from his grasp when he'd fallen but
rested on the floor nearby, still glowing brightly thanks to
the tough housing of aircraft aluminum.
Righting himself, Macready raised the end of the shotgun
and hunted with the light. Clark quickly came up to stand
next to him. Very little light entered from the dimly
illuminated corridor outside. Macready moved the light
around, trying to get his bearings in the unfamiliar chamber.
The far corner of the kennel was a seething mass of
flashing teeth and ferocious snarls. The latter alternated
with that high-pitched, bone-chilling screech. Something
periodically threw dogs out of the pile with considerable
force, but each time they were tossed aside they struggled
back to their feet and rushed back in to rejoin the battle.
The light moved and illuminated something else.
Something that wasn't a dog. Some thing. Or . . . was it a
dog? It was impossible to tell because it seemed to have
some of the aspects of a dog one moment and when the
light revealed it the next, something entirely different. Its
very shape seemed to alter as they watched.
Macready blinked. The weak light was playing nasty
tricks on his eyes. He tried hard to focus on what was a dog
one second and wasn't the next.
A voice sounded imperatively from behind him.
"What's going on, dammit!" Garry roared.
"There's something in here with the dogs! Some kind of
animal." He lifted the shotgun and aimed it toward the pile
in the corner. "I'm going to shoot."
"No, wait, you'll hit our animals!" Clark warned him.
Macready hesitated.
"Do something else, then!"
Clark waded into the heaving tangle of fur and fangs and
began grabbing at necks and bodies, tossing them aside. As
soon as he'd cleared several away he started swinging the
fire axe, chopping and hacking at the gurgling, hissing
silhouette that the dogs were attacking.
From out of the darkness came a thick, bristly dark leg. It
looked like something borrowed from a spider, or maybe a
crab. It wrapped itself tightly around the axe and jerked
spasmodically, sending Clark smashing into the wall. The
handler somehow retained his grip on the weapon.
The rest of the station team was arriving in ones and
twos. They tried to squeeze into the kennel entrance behind
Garry for a look at the chaos inside.
Macready thought he could see the thing clearly now. He
was damned if he was going to wait on Clark any longer. The
shotgun went off several times, an ear-splitting thunder in
the enclosed kennel. A furry missile, one of the still-fighting
huskies, was flung at him and sent him stumbling to the
floor. The flashlight rolled free again.
As soon as Macready went down Garry moved toward
him, holding the Magnum with both hands and firing
steadily in the direction of the screeching and moaning. A
dog yelped, struck by a round. Macready was crawling past
the station manager's ankles, trying to recover the
flashlight.
"Clark! Where are you? Clark!" There was no reply from
the dog handler. He'd hit the wall hard. In any case, it was
difficult to hear anything in the kennel now, between the
hissing, the frenzied barking of the dogs, and the regular
eruption of Garry's pistol.
Childs came loping down a side corridor. He was towing a
large tank on a two-wheeled dolly. Dual hoses ran from the
top of the tank to a heavy industrial torch.
He halted outside the kennel and shouted to the men
inside.
"What's happening in there?"
"Childs, is that you?" Macready's voice.
"Yeah, it's me, Mac. What the hell's going on?"
"You bring that torch? You get your ass in here with it!"
Childs didn't hesitate. He opened valves on the top of the
tank, then switched on the gunlike device itself and rushed
into the kennel trailing hoses behind him. The other men
made a path for him.
It was still crowded inside and he bumped into Garry,
throwing him off balance.
"Sorry, chief. Can't see clearly yet."
"Never mind me!" the station manager snapped at him,
trying to reload in the near blackness.
"Childs!" Macready howled.
"I'm coming, dammit. Where are you?"
"Here!" Macready signaled with his flashlight, then
directed the beam toward the reduced cluster of battling
sled dogs. "It's over there in the corner. Torch it."
"What about the dogs?" the mechanic hesitated.
"Screw the dogs! Torch it!"
Childs touched a switch. Blue flame spurted from the tip
of the device. He aimed it grimly toward the tangled mass
and opened a valve wide.
Flame shot across the floor and struck the center of the
mass. The dogs broke away immediately, a more elemental
terror temporarily overwhelming their fear and anger at
whatever they'd attacked. They scattered and broke
instinctively for the open kennel door.
Part of the wooden kennel floor began to burn crisply,
something mewed and screeched and clawed at the back
wall, too big to fit through the dog door.
"We're on fire!" Childs shouted worriedly.
"Don't let up," Macready ordered him. He was firing the
shotgun repeatedly into the flames.
Garry joined the firing and emptied his Magnum into the
back of the kennel, then spoke calmly as he reloaded a third
time. "Extinguishers," he told the men gathered behind him.
Macready had run out of shells. He stood next to Childs,
keeping the twin hoses from getting underfoot. His
expression bordered on the demonic.
"That's it, that's it! Don't let up, Childs. Burn the sucker,
burn it!"
The mechanic held the stream of flame steady as he
moved slowly toward the back wall. The hissing continued to
fill the kennel, more distinct now since the surviving dogs
had fled.
Outside in the corridor the rest of the crew was chasing
smoldering dogs, spraying them with chemical fire
retardant. The smell of burning fur filled the air. Dogs and
men choked on smoke and chemicals. Norris led a couple of
the crew into the kennel, where they began spraying the
floor to keep the flames from spreading.
Alter a brief eternity the screeching and howling began to
fade. There was a last lingering hiss. Then it was silent,
except for the steady roar of the torch.
Macready was standing next to the mechanic, hammering
on his shoulder with a fist, his eyes wild. "That's it, man.
Burn it back to hell, burn it . . ."
 Childs turned off the torch. His voice was subdued.
"That's it, man. It's done. It's over."
Macready stared up at him, breathing hard, his fist still
poised to strike. Childs grabbed the pilot's arm and
squeezed. "It's over, Mac." He put the torch down and
walked around the pilot. A body was sitting there, leaning up
against the wall of the kennel.
"Hey, Clark." Childs stared into the handler's face. Clark's
eyes were open, staring, but the man did nothing to
acknowledge Childs's presence. The mechanic turned and
shouted anxiously toward the corridor. "Hey, somebody go
get Doc Copper. Fast!"
Garry was standing alongside him. He bent over, shining
a flashlight into that handler's face. "Shock, looks like."
Childs rose, then turned to gaze back to the corner where
he'd played the torch. "He's got company . . ."
That morning the recreation room slowly filled with
exhausted men. Their faces showed the effects of worry and
little sleep. There wasn't much conversation, none of it the
usual light bantering, and none of it very loud. They
conversed in urgent whispers and pointed toward the middle
of the room.
Blair stared silently at the badly burned corpses on the
central table. There were two unfortunate dogs there, and
something else.
The bodies were connected together like Siamese twins,
bound in an inextricable embrace that had nothing to do
with love. One animal wore the remnant of Clark's bandage
and was otherwise easily identifiable as their Norwegian
visitor. It was much larger than its companion, bigger than
any husky had a right to be, and there were aspects of it
that were anything but doglike.
From hips to chest the main torso was cracked like old
plaster and peeling back at the edges. It looked as though
something had blown up inside the animal's gut and was
trying to force itself outward.
 Odd appendages, a peculiar kind of organic cording, were
wrapped around both bodies and connected to the flesh of
each. They were uncomfortably like those protruding from
the body of the deformed Norwegian that Copper, Blair, and
Fuchs had been dissecting.
Clark sat in a chair against the far wall. His eyes were still
glassy, but Copper had administered a relaxant and the dog
handler was beginning to emerge from shock. Nauls stood
next to him, talking slowly and patiently, trying to comfort
his friend.
Childs stood nearby and sucked on a joint, trying to relax
and failing. There was no pleasure in the smoke, not this
morning. His eyes were fixed on the floor. When he'd torched
the thing that lay on the table back there in the kennel it
had let out a terrible scream, and he couldn't get that
inhuman wail out of his head.
The burned and battered corpses of two other dogs lay on
the floor in the middle of the room, close to the table with its
gruesome burden. At least, they looked like dogs. Blair
turned his attention from them back to the travesty of life on
the table. His face showed growing concern.
He turned and walked over to a wall intercom, and
pushed the button connecting the rec room to the infirmary.
"Fuchs?"
The reply was slow in coming. "Yeah. That you, Blair?"
"Yes. How's it coming?"
The assistant biologist turned and looked over toward the
surgery table. Three more dogs lay on it. All were sedated
and badly cut up. But they were still alive.
"Slowly. I'm no vet."
"Neither's Clark." Blair looked across the room to where
the handler was still sitting dazedly in his chair. "He's still
not in any shape to help."
"I know." The younger man chewed on his lower lip. "I'm
doing the best I can for them."
"Okay. See you."
 "Yeah. Hey, you figure anything out yet?"
"Not yet. Bye."
"Bye yourself." Fuchs moved away from the intercom and
started unwrapping new bandages. One of the dogs on the
table whined at him.
"Easy, boy. We'll get you fixed up as fast as we can. I'll do
your leg in a minute." He started toward the table.
Nauls was patting Clark on the shoulder and smiling,
trying to raise the other man's spirits. "Hey, it's okay now,
man. It's dead. It's over." He gestured toward the card table.
"You see? There's nothing to worry about any more."
Clark's head turned slowly and he bestowed a dreamy
grin on the cook. "I know. Childs killed it. I saw. Last night,
wasn't it?"
Nauls let out a relieved breath. "That's right, man. You got
it." If Clark's time sense had returned that was a sure sign he
was going to be okay. At least, that's what Copper had said.
He fervently hoped so. He liked the handler. He wasn't
snobbish, like some of the scientists.
Nauls looked over at the senior biologist. "What
happened to those dogs, Blair?" He indicated the card table
and its distorted shapes.
The scientist looked back at him, then at the table again.
"You tell me, Nauls. You tell me."
The little work cubicle was filled with filing boxes full of
three-by-five cards, tapes, small tools, and open plastic
crates filled with pieces of rock. Norris sat at the single small
desk. A light hung over him, its flexible metal neck bent at a
convenient angle, giving it the look of a steel cobra. It shone
brightly on the maps the geophysicist was sorting through.
Some of the notations on the maps were in Norwegian, some
in English.
Eventually he found the chart he was hunting for and
placed it above one of the Norwegian maps. He used a black
marking pen to make identical notations on both.
 "Here," he announced confidentially. "This is where they
were spending most of their time. I cross-checked with their
notes. You can figure out the months where they've been
written out. They used numeric notation most of the time,
though." He continued to make little arrowheads and dots on
the maps."
Macready stopped looking over Norris's shoulder and
turned at a sound. Bennings poked his head into the room.
"Well?" Macready asked him.
"Pretty nasty out, Mac. Thirty-five knots."
"Any chance it'll let up?"
"Hard to say. I wouldn't count on it. There's one good
thing, though."
"What's that?"
"Not much snow in suspension right now. It's pretty clear,
and you shouldn't have any icing problems. But it's not what
I'd call recreational flying weather."
Macready turned to glance over Norris's shoulder again.
"Screw it. I'm going up anyway. I'll take Palmer as a backup,
just in case we run into any trouble." His eyes were
concentrated on the lower of the two maps, the one with the
English markings.
"You sure we can find that place, Norris?"
The geophysicist nodded reassuringly and rose from his
chair. "The coordinates are the same on both maps. We'll
find it, all right." He started rolling the maps together and
turned out the cobra light.
Garry entered the rec room, glanced momentarily at the
still stunned Clark and the attentive Nauls, then walked over
to join Blair in gazing down at the interlocked animal forms.
The station manager wore a clean shirt and had just shaved.
The Magnum rested in the holster at his belt, cleaned and
reloaded.
"What have you figured out, Blair?"
"Other than a slow way of going nuts, not much." He
picked at the fragments of bandage still attached to one
bulging leg. "It sure as hell wasn't anything new that got in
from outside." He looked over toward Clark. "I'm sure the
kennel was locked when Clark found it. We checked the
outside dog door. It was still latched from the inside.
"It had to be the new dog. The Norwegian dog."
Garry looked doubtful, and angry. "I just can't
comprehend any of this. It was just a dog."
A sharp, derisive laugh sounded from the other side of
the room. There was no humor in Childs's voice. "Wasn't no
dog, chief. I don't have to have no degree to figure that out."
"That tape Macready showed us earlier this morning,"
Blair murmured softly.
"Couldn't make much out of it myself."
"I've asked him to try and locate the site where they were
working," the biologist went on. "Where that peculiar oval in
the ice was, where the explosion broke their video camera.
He's taking Palmer with him. Norris volunteered to go along.
Okay with you?"
"Sure, if you think it's advisable."
"I'm damned if I can think of anything else to advise."
"You think there's a connection?"
"Maybe." He turned to stare back down at the table and
the enigma it held. "Anyhow, like I said, I don't have any
other bright ideas. You?"
The station manager tried to make sense of the insane
happenings, but could only shake his head dolefully.
The wind flailed the white desert. The chopper bounced
and dipped and only experience and determination kept the
men inside her from doing the same.
Macready fought the controls as they rode the currents,
trying to stay as close to the ground as possible so that they
wouldn't miss anything, while still leaving enough leeway
for evasive action in the event the craft was caught by a
downdraft. It was hard work and you couldn't relax for a
minute.
 The storm had passed quickly, but the crystal-clear air
was deceptive. The only difference so far as Macready was
concerned was that when there was no blowing snow or ice
you could have the pleasure of seeing where you were most
likely to crash.
Palmer occupied the copilot's seat while Norris peered
over their shoulders from behind. The geophysicist was
pointing at the plastic map taped to the flight console.
"One of their sites should be directly over here. The one
we're after is a few hundred yards farther south."
"I know." Macready leaned on the controls and the copter
heeled over to starboard. A high, even-topped white wall
loomed directly ahead.
Norris regarded it professionally. The symmetry of the
formation hinted that more than normal mountain-building
activity might be responsible for its formation. The wall
might mark the location of a minor fault line, or a lava
tunnel. Or there might not be any stone present at all if it
was a fossil pressure ridge of pure ice.
The copter rose and they soared over the wall. On the
other side a flat glacial plain stretched toward distant high
mountains.
Instantly visible as soon as they cleared the ridge and
marking the center of the white plain like a giant ink spot
was an enormous blackened crater.
The lab was full of dead dogs. They lay in a macabre row,
each carefully tagged on one leg. Clark had eventually
recovered his senses sufficiently to assist in the unpleasant
work, but the pain finally became too much for him and he
had to flee the room. Each of the dead animals had a name,
each had been a close friend.
Fuchs was preparing new slides, which Blair studied
under the microscope. Two cells were visible through the
eyepiece. They were active, neither quiescent nor dead. One
looked quite normal. Its companion looked anything but.
 At the moment the two were joined together by a thin
stream of protoplasm. Material from the larger cell, which
was long and thin, flowed into the smaller, spherical cell. As
it did so the smaller cell swelled visibly, until the cell wall
fractured in three places. Immediately the smaller cell
assumed a flattened shape like the other and three new
streams of material began to flow outward from its interior.
Neither cell appeared to have lost any mass.
Blair pulled away from the eyepiece and frowned as he
checked his watch. It was running in stopwatch mode. He
turned it off. The resulting readout was very puzzling.
Macready bounced the copter a couple of times as he set
it down, but neither ship nor passengers showed ill effects.
The steady hum of the rotors slowed to a stop. He pulled
down his snow goggles and stepped out onto the ice. Norris
and Palmer were right behind him
It was a short walk to the fringe of the crater. Macready
paused to kick aside a gnarled chunk of gray metal. The
impact reduced it to splintery fragments. Another piece was
so big they had to walk around it.
The massive hole was more than fifteen feet deep.
Considerably more. The bottom of the crater was lined with
charred, blackened metal. Everything was gray or black. The
metal fragments were lusterless, dull as antimony but
smooth all the same. Macready didn't know what to make of
a polished surface that was nonreflective.
The ice around the rim was as smooth as glass and only
recently rouged over with freshly blown snow. What hadn't
been blasted away or vaporized had melted.
The outline of the hole suggested that it had contained a
large sphere. Macready met Norris's eyes and said nothing.
Only Palmer made no pretense of concealing his awe.
"Wow. Whatever it was, it was big."
"Look at this." Macready moved to his left and picked
something off the ice. His companions gathered around.
 "Recognize it?" he asked them. Palmer shook his head,
but Norris nodded quickly.
"Looks like the remains of a medium-charge thermite
cannister. Standard military ordinance. NATO uses the same
stuff we do."
"Yeah." Macready heaved it toward the helicopter, the
beginning of a growing collection. They spread out slightly
and began to circle the crater.
There wasn't much solid debris. Much of what remained
was too large to be carried. A fine gray ash lay on the ice
and radiated outward from the center of the hole. Norris
knelt and took a couple of small plastic tubes from a pocket.
Using a small pick he started taking ice and powder samples
from the crater's perimeter.
There wasn't much for the two pilots to do except wait for
the scientist. Palmer continued to marvel at the size of the
crater. Glacial ice this far south was solid as rock. No
thermite charge had ripped that wound in the surface.
Macready got tired of walking, retraced his steps and
bent over alongside Norris. The geophysicist was examining
a small piece of metal. He had a small box out and open. It
held tiny vials of reagents and catalysts. A chart full of fine
print was glued to the inside of the cover. A few of the words
were in English, the rest in rarified words of many syllables.
The symbols were completely alien to him.
While he watched, Norris dribbled a little red fluid from
one of the vials onto the specimen of debris. Nothing
happened and the fluid ran off into the snow. The contents
of a second vial were tried, with the same result. A powerful
smell rose from the liquid and Macready's nose twitched.
Norris looked up at him. "At first I thought it was some
alloy of magnesium. It's light enough. More than light
enough." He carefully wiped the gray splinter against the
ice, then the side of his boot.
"I never saw metal with such a low specific gravity. It has
some of the characteristics of metallic lithium, but that's
crazy. Stuff like that can't be worked like normal metal. At
least, that's what I've been told." He carefully put the last
vial he'd utilized back into its slot in the box.
"That was concentrated sulfuric acid. Might as well have
been water for all the effect it had on this." He tapped the
fragment with a gloved finger. "Yet some of it turns to
powder if you so much as blow on it."
"So you don't know what it is?" Macready asked
Norris shook his head. "Haven't the foggiest. Some kind
of alloy. Wish I'd taken more metallurgy. But I'd bet a two-
year sabbatical that this stuff is unique." He turned to give
the empty hole a look of disgust.
"And those poor dumb bastards had to go and blow the
hell out of it."
"Give 'em a break, Norris," Macready said. "I'm sure they
planted their charges carefully. They were probably just
trying to break up enough ice to make digging easy."
"I guess." Norris didn't sound very understanding.
Macready picked up the splinter and gazed at it. "Some
of it powders, but some, like this piece, resists strong acid.
Then how the hell did they blow it up?"
"Something in the metal, or in something that vaporized
during the explosion, must have reacted chemically with the
thermite. Or maybe it was the heat that did it, I don't know."
He took the specimen back from Macready, slipped it into a
plastic sample tube and began writing on it.
Macready rose and studied the horizon.
"There've been a lot of temporary camps set up in this
area. Could some outfit, the Soviets or the Australians or
somebody, have dug in a short-term station here and then
pulled up stakes without taking everything with them?"
"Like what, for instance?"
"You know the big tanks we use to store the fuel for the
choppers and the tractor?" He gestured toward the crater.
"Could some group have left one here? The thermite
could've set off any remaining gas"
 Macready was reaching. He knew it, and so did Norris
"Sorry, Mac," the geophysicist countered. "In the first
place, the shape of the crater's all wrong. Next, this ice is
glacial, not recent. You don't bury a temporary storage tank
under twenty feet of solid ice. Also, propane and gasoline,
any kind of fuel, is strictly rationed at any outpost. Nobody
would take off and leave a lot of valuable fuel behind. Costs
too much to get it down here."
"Maybe they intended to return."
"Maybe, but I wouldn't think so." Norris held up a gloveful
of chipped ice. "This doesn't show any of the telltale signs of
having been disturbed. It would if somebody'd had a base
here. There'd be skid marks at least, even if all they put up
were surface quonsets." He rose.
"Of course we can check on it when we make contact with
McMurdo again. They'd have records of anything that's put
down hereabouts."
"What if the Soviets or one of the Eastern European
consortiums like the East German-Rumanian team were
running a clandestine operation here?"
"C'mon, Mac," Norris chided him. "There's plenty of ice
cover just as interesting as this a helluva lot closer to their
permanent installations."
"Yeah." The pilot kicked at the surface, sending particles
flying. "But maybe there isn't any oil there."
Norris considered a moment. "Now that's a possibility." He
stared evenly at Macready.
After a moment the pilot grinned sheepishly back at him.
"Okay, I give in, I don't believe any of that either." His
expression turned serious once more. "So what do you make
of it?"
"You know damn well what we both make of it."
"No chance it could have been some new kind of test
craft?"
Norris shook his head. "No, and for a lot of the same
reasons. This ice is too old and too undisturbed. Seismic
activity has been shoving this region upward for a long time,
not the other way round." He held up another ice sample.
"It's tough to be certain in the field, but I'd say this ice
the thing was buried in is over a hundred thousand years
old. Pleistocene at least."
There, was a shout from behind them and both men
looked around. Palmer was waving to them.
"Now, what's he found?" wondered Norris. He and
Macready walked over to stand alongside the younger man.
Palmer was standing some fifty yards from the rim of the
crater. A large, rectangular chunk of ice had been cut from
the surface near his feet. The excavation was some fifteen
feet long, six wide and about eight deep, according to
Norris's eyeball estimation. All three men stared silently at
the hole.
There was nothing down there except more ice. Snow
whirled around their boots like white laces . . .
 This time of year night came quickly to the bottom of the
world. Several of the men in the rec room were gathered
around the large TV monitor. It was playing back the
sequence showing the Norwegians finding the mysterious
buried object that Norris and Macready, at least, were ready
to believe was a vessel of unknown type and origin.
Suddenly the landscape on the screen, the movements of
the members of the Norwegian team, no longer seemed so
matter-of-fact. The tape was no longer a dull record of
ordinary, everyday events. It had acquired something more
than mere historical interest. Something intangible and yet
very real to the men in the room who stared at the flickering,
badly focused pictures.
It contained a presence.
Macready was sitting quietly across from a new chess set,
though his attention was split elsewhere, between private
thoughts and the glass of Scotch resting on the edge of the
table.
Clark had recovered from the previous day's shock. He
was sitting by himself in a corner chair, flipping through a
magazine salvaged from the Norwegian camp. The contents
were not of a scientific nature, but the handler found the
succession of glossy photos edifying nonetheless. They took
his mind off other, less pleasurable things recently observed.
He turned another page, his free hand toying with a piece
of the peculiar metal the exploration team had brought back
from the site of the explosion.
Childs finally turned away from the group studying the
videotape and walked over to confront Macready. The pilot
looked up absently.
 "Hi, Childs." He waved indifferently at the board. "Want to
play?"
The mechanic shook his head. "Don't know how."
"I'll teach you. I get tired of playing the machine."
"Not now," Childs said impatiently. "Okay, Mac, now run
this by me again. Thousands of years ago this rocket ship
crashes, right?"
"It probably didn't have rockets, according to what Norris
tells me."
"Yeah, well, I don't give a damn if it used oars. This ship
crashes here on the ice and the . . ."
Macready's mind was elsewhere.
"Macready!"
The pilot blinked, sat up straighter in his chair. "Look,
we're just guessing about this stuff. It could've been part of
some Soviet installation or something. Some secret
experiment they were running."
"That's not what you told Garry."
"He wanted my opinion. That's all it is at this point.
Norris's too."
"Yeah. Go on."
Macready sighed as he started to reiterate the theory he
and the geophysicist had concocted on the flight back from
the site of the crater.
It was hard to participate fully in the daily life of the
camp when you were required to spend most of your waking
time in one room. Nauls didn't mind the isolation, though. It
left him alone with his music.
At the moment the Gossamers were cooking in the
background while he prepared to do so literally at the stove.
He hunted through the large storage cabinet.
"Where's that big ol' steel pot of mine? Damn! Never can
find anything the day you need it."
He slammed the door of the cabinet shut and turned in
frustration to several of the overhead storage shelves, that's
when he spotted something in the nearby trash bin. Curious,
he walked over to check it out. When he recognized what it
was his curiosity turned to disgust.
Somebody was always playing jokes on him. Good old
Nauls, always the easy target. Everybody in camp knew how
fastidious he was about his kitchen.
He reached into the trash bin and pulled out the dirty,
torn pair of long johns. Somebody was going to own up to
this outrage. Practical jokes were one thing, sanitation
something else.
". . . and so it crashes," Macready was telling Childs, "and
this guy, the pilot or whatever he was, gets thrown out, or
walks out, and ends up freezing. Then a hundred thousand
years down the line the Norwegians come moseying along,
find him and dig him up, and then accidentally blow up his
ship while they're trying to excavate it."
Childs made a face. "I just can't believe this bullshit." He
looked across the room. "You believe this bulishit, Blair?"
Lost in thought, the biologist failed to reply. Cell structure
and alloy structure were all jumbled together in his mind,
confusing him worse than ever.
"I'll stick with your Soviet camp theory," Childs told
Macready confidentially. "As for that big block of ice they cut
out, it might've held corroborating evidence. Something
with Cyrillic markings or stuff. That's why they were trying
so hard to get at the bigger stuff. Maybe it blew because it
was booby-trapped."
Macready eyed the mechanic challengingly. "Sure, and
then they buried it under twenty feet of glacial ice. Anyway,
we'll know soon enough. Garry's checking the station
records to see if the Russkies have been operating in that
region in the past. We'll double-check with McMurdo as soon
as Sanders can get through to them.
"But don't hold your breath. Norris says it's impossible to
bury anything in ice that old and that solid without leaving
some indication that you've been digging. And we didn't
find so much as a shovel scratch, except for what the
Norwegians left behind."
The joint dangled loosely from Palmer's mouth. It was
unlit, but its presence comforted him. He was already
pleasantly high anyway, a nice condition to be in when you
had to deal with the possibility that an ancient alien
spaceship might've just blown itself to powder barely a few
miles from your bedside.
The relaxed state of mind also facilitated Palmer's
personal research. Norris and Blair weren't the only ones at
the station who could perform serious research, no sir!
Palmer still had several months of back issues of the
National Enquirer and The Star to catch up on.
He looked up at the scoffing mechanic. "Happens all the
time, man. They're falling out of the skies like flies.
Government knows all about it. Chariots of the Gods, man.
They practically own South America. I mean, they taught the
Incas everything they knew. How do you think those skinny
little Indians built Sacsayhuaman, man? You think they
hauled those ten-ton boulders around on their backs?"
Childs gave him a disdainful look. "Somebody ought to
hit you with a ten-ton boulder, man. Shake out the
cobwebs." He indicated the stack of scandal sheets. "That
shit you're reading ain't exactly Scientific American, you
know."
Palmer waved a handful of garish headlines at the
mechanic.
"It's all suppressed in the slick magazines. The
government doesn't want anyone to know. Read von
Däniken! Have you ever read von Däniken, huh? Get your
facts straight. They've been watching us for years." He rolled
his eyes skyward, his voice full of mock fear. "They're
probably up there, watching us right now."
"If they're looking for specimens I sure as hell hope they
take you," Childs shot back. "They'll never bother us again."
A few guffaws sounded from some of the other men,
 Clark slid lower in his chair and turned the magazine he
was looking at sideways. A bottom page flipped down.
"Jesus," he breathed reverently, "why would those guys ever
want to leave Norway?"
A snicking noise grew steadily louder out in the corridor.
Nauls grabbed a door and swung himself into the room, his
skates skidding to a sharp stop. He shook the crumpled-up
long johns at the befuddled crew like a declaration of war.
"Which one of you ugly muthers has been tossing his
dirty underwear into my clean garbage bin?" He threw the
offending garment across the room. It settled like a blanket
over Macready's wooden chessmen.
"I want my kitchen clean," the cook railed at them. "Germ
free. You schmucks better knock it off. Next time I find
something like that in my kitchen I'll bake it into your next
supper!"
Without giving anyone a chance to reply he whirled and
skated off down the hall. Macready leaned forward and
gingerly plucked the oddly torn underwear off his
chessboard, rolling it up into a ball. Childs ignored the brief,
noisy intrusion and resumed his pacing, uninterested either
in the long johns or Nauls's complaint. It had been a poor
joke at best and it wasn't his underwear.
"So come on now, Macready. Let's try it one more time.
The Norwegian dudes come by, find him and dig him up . . ."
Macready threw the ball of cloth across the room. It
landed cleanly in a small trash can. He smiled inwardly. He
preferred basketball to chess, but it's tough to set up a court
in Antarctica.
Not that he hadn't tried. If you could move your arms at
all in summer weather, you discovered that the ball didn't
dribble too well on snow. Beneath the thin layer of snow was
ice, which made for a more exciting but far more lethal
game. Chess was safer. He rubbed his leg where he'd broken
it last year while trying to make a simple lay up.
 "Yeah," he absently told the attentive Childs, "they dig
him up and cart him back to their base. He gets thawed out,
wakes up, and scares the shit out of them. And they get into
one hell of a brawl."
"Okay, okay, right! " Childs jumped enthusiastically on
the last part of the pilot's explanation. He wore an
expression of triumph. "Now you just tell me one thing, Mac.
One thing. How's this mutherfucker wake up after thousands
of years of making like a side of frozen beef, huh? Tell me
that."
The mechanic's intensity annoyed Macready almost as
much as the persistent inconsistencies in his theory. "I don't
know how. What am I, Einstein? He does it because he's
different than we are. Because he's a space guy. Because he
likes being frozen for a hundred thousand years. Maybe he'd
just finished piloting for a couple of hundred thousand and
he stopped to take a little nap. What do you want from me,
anyway? Go ask Blair. He's got the brains. Me, I'm just a
flyboy."
Childs turned and spoke brusquely to the senior biologist.
"Okay, Blair, what about it? You buy any of this?"
Blair was staring straight ahead, but he was seeing
something other than the far wall. Something insubstantial.
He was talking to himself, but just loud enough so that
everyone else could understand his words.
"It was here . . . got to that dog . . . it was here in this
camp. That's why they were chasing it . . . that's why they
were acting nuts. Not shooting at Macready and Norris . . .
just trying to hit the dog . . . didn't care whether they hit
anyone else or not . . . just the dog, just get the dog . . ."
It was suddenly very quiet in the rec room. Blair's
monologue had quietly overwhelmed all other conversation.
Even Clark had looked up from his magazine.
"So," Garry finally said from his seat near the pub, "so
what? It's over with, done."
 Blair turned to him, said nothing. He didn't have to. His
expression was eloquent enough.
"Well," Bennings said edgily, "isn't it?"
Blair rose from his seat. His eyes seemed to come back to
the room, but his voice was still subdued. "All of you come
with me. Everybody. I've got something to show you, and a
few things to say."
They filed slowly out of the recreation room, talking softly
among themselves.
"And I mean everybody," Blair announced from the
doorway. "Somebody get a hold of Nauls. Dinner can wait."
As they entered the lab the biologist methodically flipped
on each of the several light switches. Then he moved to the
center study table and pulled away the sheet covering its
contents. Some of the men crowded around. A few took
chairs. They'd already seen the two bodies on the table.
The two intertwined dogs were no prettier the second
time around then they'd been the first. Cold radiated from
them. They'd been kept in the lab freezer until only a few
minutes ago. Despite the cold and Blair's treatments they
were already beginning to smell.
"Whatever that Norwegian dog was, it . . . it was capable
of duplicating itself," Blair told them solemnly. "Not to
mention changing its form. Our visitor," and he pointed at
the larger mass resting on the left side of the table, "wasn't
a dog anymore.
"When it attacked our animal, whatever had taken
possession of it began to try and link up." He indicated the
tendon-like structures wrapped tightly around both corpses.
"I believe those structures to be part of the duplicating
takeover process.
"When I speak of 'taking possession' of another dog I
mean in the biological sense. Technically, there's nothing
mysterious or supernatural about the process. The
methodology is purely mechanical.
 "We can only theorize at this point as to the details. I
don't have nearly the facilities to do more than that. What I
believe happens during the takeover process is that the
original thing injects a certain quantity of its own DNA into
the cells of the animal it wishes to control." He held up a
gooey dog leg that had been part of the Norwegian animal
"For instance, this isn't dog at all. It looks like dog, but
the cell structure bears no resemblance to normal canine
cellular architecture. The cell walls, as in the original
creature," and he waved with the leg, a gruesome baton,
"are incredibly flexible. Controlled by the patterns in the
DNA, they can conform to any pattern the creature wishes,
provided it can obtain a DNA 'blueprint' to copy. In this case,
dog DNA. Get me a good electron miscroscope and in a few
hours I won't be guessing at that, I'll be proving it.
"The critical requirement is DNA to copy. Apparently the
thing's incapable of duplicating a living creature out of
nothing. It needs the control information contained in a
subject's nuclear material to merge with. Fortunately, we got
to it before it had time to finish."
"Finish what?" Nauls muttered.
Blair indicated the remains of the camp's sled dog.
"Finish taking control of our animal." His hand rested on the
furry skull. "The merging activity which occurs among the
cells of the brain is particularly rapid and insidious. Like I
said, I don't really have the right equipment here for this
kind of work, but from what I've seen so far, brain tissue
from that animal," and he indicated the bloated corpse of
the Norwegian dog, "contains some of the damnedest
synaptic connections any biologist ever imagined.
Combinations and linkages that haven't got shit to do with
canine evolution.
"So you see, in addition to taking control of existing cell
structures and patterns, the original creature is also able to
create new ones to its own requirements."
 Copper frowned down at the table. "A body is only
designed to support so much cellular material. If the
invasion by this creature creates new matter in addition to
taking over existing structures, how does the body's life
support system cope with the extra load?"
Blair's voice remained even, tutorial. "As you say, the
body is only designed to keep so much organic material
alive and functioning. Portions of this dog's brain, for
example, have been blocked off by new structures. The flow
of oxygenated blood has been redirected."
"In other words," Copper said quietly, "part of its brain
has been turned off?"
Blair nodded. "Certain cerebral regions were dead before
this animal died, having been supplanted in importance by
new activity elsewhere."
"What regions were kill . . . were turned off?"
"Difficult to say. There was massive parasitic invasion.
Some of those which control portions of the memory,
intelligence, and in particular individuality. Hard to tell with
a dog, of course, be it dead or alive." He turned his gaze
back to the interlocked bodies.
"I think the whole process would have taken about an
hour. Maybe more. I've no way of knowing for certain, of
course. There's nothing comparable in the literature. I'm
extrapolating as best I can from what little we've been able
to find out."
"And when that hour was up?" Garry asked pointedly.
The biologist looked over at him. "The conduits supplying
connective material . . . these tendon things . . . would
vanish and you'd have two normal-looking dogs again. Only
they wouldn't be normal anymore, and they'd be dogs only
in appearance."
"I'll buy that," agreed Palmer fervently. "That thing in the
ice the Norwegians dug up sure weren't no dog."
"Of course not." Blair tried to control his impatience.
These men are not scientists, he reminded himself, except
for Bennings, Norris, and Fuchs. "If nothing else, the size of
the missing portion of the excavated ice block points to a
much larger creature.
"How much larger we've no way of knowing. As I've said,
the altered cell structure is remarkably flexible. It's capable
of a good deal of expansion or contraction."
"What do you think happened?" Garry asked him.
The biologist considered the question carefully.
"Whenever the original thing was thawed out, revived . . .
well, it was certainly disoriented. If its memory was intact, it
must have realized it couldn't survive for long in our
atmosphere in its orginal state. Being the incredibly
adaptive creature that it is, it tried to become something
that could"
Once again he indicated the recumbent mass on the
table.
"Before the Norwegians killed it, it somehow got to this
dog."
"What do you mean, 'got' to the dog?" Clark asked.
Blair tried to be patient. "I've tried to make this simple.
That may be impossible. This thing was a life form that was
able to take control of any creature it got a hold of, cell for
cell, neuron for neuron. The concept is staggering. The
closest terrestrial analog I can think of is the lichen, which is
not really an individual creature but an association of two
very different kinds of life, algae and fungi.
"But this is much more complex and complete, and it's
certainly not in the least symbiotic. The invading thing acts
like a true parasite, taking complete control of the host for
its own advantage. There's no mutual assistance, insofar as
I've been able to determine. I . . . I don't pretend to
completely understand all the ramifications myself."
"You're saying," Childs broke in, pointing skeptically at
the Norwegian intruder on the table, "that big mother in the
ice those guys chipped out became that dog?"
 Blair nodded. "And there was no reason for it to stop
there. As we can see here, it tried to take control of one of
our dogs as well. I don't see what its limits would be. It could
have become as many dogs as it wanted to, without
surrendering control of its original host body. It doesn't take
much organic material to alter DNA, though I'm not sure
about the other large-scale changes.
"One cell is enough. The DNA pattern of the new host is
irrevocably altered. And so on and so on, each animal it
takes over becoming a duplicate of the original thing."
"You been into Childs's weed, Blair?" Norris muttered.
Blair's fist slammed onto the table. "Look, I know it's hard
to accept! I know it's difficult to picture an enemy you can't
see. But if that stuff gets into your system, in about an hour
—"
"It takes you over," Fuchs finished for him.
"It's more than that, more than you becoming a part of it.
The 'you' is gone, wiped out, shunted aside permanently by
a new set of cellular instructions. It retains only what it
needs of the original, the way it used the memory patterns
of the Norwegian dog to make certain it acted in a
recognizably doglike manner."
"It licked my hand," Norris murmured, "as it was being
chased by those guys in the helicopter. It came right up to
me and licked my hand and whined for help."
Blair nodded. "Sure it did. It keeps anything useful. This
organism is highly efficient, not wasteful. And it's clever.
Much too clever for my liking."
"So what's the problem?" Garry wanted to know. He
indicated the two bodies lying unthreateningly on the table.
"The torch crisped it pretty good."
The biologist turned to stare down at the canine forms.
"There's still some cell activity. Clinically speaking, it's nor
entirely dead yet . . ."
Clark jumped backward and stumbled over a waste can.
The reaction from the rest of the men was similar if not as
extreme.
"Take it easy," Blair told them, hiding the glimmerings of
a smile.
"You said one cell was enough to take control," Norris
murmured, his eyes on the suddenly malignant corpses.
"To imprint a pattern, yes," Blair admitted, "but not to
initiate the takeover procedure. That requires a much
greater quantity of protoplasmic material. The tendon
structures which seem so important to the process, for one
thing. They're composed of millions of cells." But the men
shuffled uneasily, still uncertain, still fearful.
"Look." Blair tried to reassure them. "If there were any
kind of danger d'you think I'd be standing here running my
hands over the thing?" The men relaxed slightly. Blair looked
down at the two bodies. "As far as I'm concerned, however,
any cell activity, however minimal, is too much."
"What do you recommend?" Garry asked him.
Blair glanced at his assistant. They'd discussed the
possibilities previously, when Blair had detected the minimal
remaining cell activity. Still, Fuchs's eyes widened when he
saw in his superior's expression which choice had been
made.
"You can't. You can't do this!" Fuchs was screaming into
the night.
It was very dark outside. The wind had let up and there
was no snow in the air to obscure the vision of the heavily
bundled-up men trudging out of the compound. Their
purpose was equally clear.
Macready and Copper dumped the two dog corpses onto
a cleared patch of ground. Childs upended the big can he
was carrying and soaked the two bodies. The smell of
gasoline was sharp in the perfectly clean air. He used the
entire contents of the can, shaking the last few drops onto
the rigid bodies.
"You can't do it," Fuchs was arguing violently with his
companions. "You can't burn these last remains!" He was
beside himself with a mixture of frustration and fury. But he
didn't know what to do about it.
Childs put the gas can aside and picked up the big
industrial torch while Macready emptied the contents of a
second can onto the bodies. They were going to be as
thorough as their orders allowed.
"And the horse you rode in on, Fuchs." The pilot stepped
back and tossed the can after its mate. The empty
containers ran loudly in the darkness when they struck.
"Light it up," he told Childs.
The mechanic activated the torch. Fuchs started toward
him, suddenly determined.
"Well, I'm not going to let this happen."
Childs struggled with him for a moment, then tossed him
aside. Copper intercepted the angry Fuchs and sat astride
the younger man's chest.
"Take it easy, Fuchs. Doctor's orders," he added gently.
"This is necessary."
There was a roar in the dim light as the torch sprang to
life. Unhesitantingly, Childs turned the jet of flame toward
the corpses. They exploded impressively when the fire
touched them. Snow melted around the bodies, which
burned furiously. The mechanic kept the torch on them even
after the gasoline caught.
Fuchs lay on the snow and turned his head away in
disgust. "I just can't believe this. The greatest biological
discovery in hundreds of years, and we incinerate it down to
the last cell. We're going to go down in the books as the
biggest bunch of assholes in scientific history."
"Fuck history," said Macready tersely, watching the
corpses burn. "I'd rather go down as an ignorant old asshole
than an enlightened zombie." He looked over his shoulder at
the assistant biologist, his expression grim.
"I don't suppose I should have expected anything like a
scientific attitude from you, Macready. But to get that from
Mr. Blair, and Norris." He looked up at the man sitting on his
chest, a hurt look on his face. "And from you too, Doc. And
you call yourself a scientist."
"No, I call myself a physician, though I have a few
research projects of my own. My primary concern, however,
has to be the health of the men at this station. That's why I
agreed with Blair's decision to destroy every last remnant of
this thing." He rose, moved to one side and gave the
younger man a hand up. Fuchs brushed ice particles from
his back and pants legs, saying nothing.
"I'm sorry, Fuchs," the doctor continued. "Sometimes you
have to be satisfied just to know that cobra venom is deadly.
Its not always efficacious to study the snake face to face. You
have to balance what you might learn against the known
chance of getting bit."
Childs had finally switched off the torch. The corpses
continued to blaze away for several more minutes.
When they started back toward the compound there was
nothing left on the ground but some fine powder and a few
fragments of carbonized bone . . .
 Blair was taking blood samples from the three healthy
dogs who remained in the kennel. He'd already checked out
those caged in the infirmary. Nearby, Clark was dishing out
the evening meal. The kennel seemed empty with only three
inhabitants and the handler's melancholy was palpable.
Blair's face had been reflecting conflicting thoughts ever
since he'd entered the kennel. Something had been
bothering him for quite a while now.
"Say, Clark, did you notice anything strange about that
Norwegian dog? I know it was a perfect imitation of dog
reality, but wasn't there anything at all that piqued your
curiosity about it? Any little thing?"
Clark finished dishing out the food, wiping his hands as
he considered the biologist's questions. The three surviving
animals swarmed around the food trough, tussling and
fighting for position with their usual enthusiasm. The
absence of their companions seemed not to concern them.
"No. Just that he recovered real quick. That night when I
found him in the recreation room, he'd already scraped off
his bandage. I redressed the wound before I put him back in
with the others. Noticed that it had healed up real good, but
I didn't think it was anything extraordinary. Not at the time,
anyway."
Blair was suddenly attentive. "You said, when you found
him in the rec room 'that night'?"
The handler moved toward the trough and affectionately
scratched the ears of one of the dogs. "Yeah."
"What was he doing in the rec room?"
"After I worked on him, I thought I'd let him rest a while.
Be traumatic enough to shove him in with a whole kennelful
of new mates if he'd been healthy. I left the room for a bit,
and when I came back he was gone."
"Well, where was he?" The biologist sounded funny, as
though each word was a strain. "Where did he go?"
Clark shrugged. "Hell, I don't know. I looked around for
him a couple of minutes and couldn't find him. I figured he'd
be okay by himself. He couldn't get outside, and Nauls keeps
the food locked up. So I didn't worry about him."
Blair hesitated a moment, then asked, "You're saying that
he wasn't put into the kennel until late that night?"
Something in the biologist's expression made Clark
suddenly uneasy. "Well . . . yeah, that's right."
Blair seemed to have forgotten his instruments, the
testing, the two little vials full of fresh red dog blood. He see
to have forgotten everything except Clark.
"How long were you with the dog? Alone, I mean?"
"Ah . . . he was hurt bad. Bullet nicked the artery in the
hip. I can't say for sure. An hour, hour and a half." Blair kept
staring at him, moon-eyed. "What the hell are you looking at
me like that for?"
"No reason," the biologist muttered, "no reason at all." He
was backing out of the kennel.
When he'd vanished down the corridor the puzzled Clark
turned back to his feeding animals, shaking his head in
wonder. "Now what d'you suppose got into him?" The irony
of his words didn't register on the dog handler.
Blair finally located the station manager walking down
the hallway near the south main entrance. He had to hurry
to match strides with Garry as he headed purposefully
toward communications. The biologist's face was pale, his
expression filled with worry.
"I'm telling you," he was saying urgently, "that in the
time it was wandering around the station all by itself it could
have gotten to somebody. And I'm not talking about one of
the surviving dogs."
"Anybody sick?"
 "No, no, I don't mean that kind of infection. You know
damn well what I mean."
Garry stopped outside the door to the communications
room. For a change, every piece of equipment inside was on
line, including the operator.
"Any luck yet?"
Sanders shrugged, glancing back at the two men in the
hallway. "Nothing from McMurdo, if that's what you mean.
Couple seconds of an Argentine disco station."
Garry tried to hide his disappointment. "Well, stick with
it. I want you at it round the clock. Get Copper to prescribe
something for you if you need it. We've got to get some help
in here."
"No, no!" Blair was suddenly alarmed. "You can't bring
anyone in here. That dog was all over the camp."
Garry frowned at him. "You said yourself you don't
understand what's been happening here, that you need
better equipment and experienced advice. We need to get
some experts in here. Nothing personal, but . . ."
"Hell with that, I don't give a damn about that," Blair
shouted, "I'm telling you we can't . . ."
Bennings turned a corner, interrupting them. As he talked
he referred to a complex plastic chart filled with hastily
scrawled meteorological symbols. Arrows and X's and
readings in millibars covered the continent as thoroughly as
ice.
"What'd you come up with?" Garry asked him.
"Travelwise, tomorrow may be okay," the weatherman
told him. "But after that some pretty nasty northeasterly
shit's supposed to be coming in. It is becoming winter down
here, after all. We could be socked in for several days at
least."
"Goddamn fools . . ." A new voice joined them,
accompanied by a blast of icy air as the door at the far end
of the corridor opened and Fuchs came stomping into the
hall. "The discovery of the ages, papers in every journal,
maybe even a Nobel . . ." He glanced accusingly over a
shoulder. "All thrown away in a moment of panic."
Garry looked past him. Childs was removing his heavy
outside gloves. He'd already stowed the torch. Macready and
Copper moved past him. The chopper pilot noticed Garry
staring expectantly at him and nodded once.
"You sure?"
Macready unbuttoned his outer coat. "Nothing left but
residue, chief. And damn little of that."
Garry nodded his approval. Blair was tugging at his arm.
"Listen to me, Garry. Please, you've got to—"
But the station manager was talking with Macready. "If
the weather clears enough before Sanders can contact
anybody, I'm sending you and the doc over to McMurdo."
"No!" Blair was horrified. "You can't let anybody leave the
camp!"
"I ain't going anywhere in anything over forty knots,
Garry. No matter how 'clear' it is. Especially not all the way
down to McMurdo."
"The hell you won't, Macready!"
Blair stepped between them, desperately trying to gain
the station manager's attention. "Don't you understand?
Didn't anything I said earlier make any impression on you?
That thing became a dog because it had to. Because there
wasn't anything else available at the time. It didn't want to
become a dog."
Garry whirled on him, his iron self-control finally cracking
slightly. "Damn you, Blair! You've already got everybody half
hysterical around here. Why don't you shut up for a while?
"I remember what you said and I think I understand the
ramifications as well as anyone else. But I'm station
manager and I've got to make the hard decisions. And it's
my decision that we need some expert help in here, and the
sooner the better.
"I'm sorry if that doesn't square with your personal
theories, but kindly keep in mind that I have to do what I
think is best for everyone involved, and that's just what I'm
going to do."
"But you can't let anybody leave!" Blair insisted
emphatically. "You can't . . ."
"Look, I'm just about fed up with this whole business,
Blair." The station manager was restraining himself with an
effort. "I've got six dead Norwegians on my hands, a
destroyed research station belonging to a friendly nation, a
burned-up flying saucer, and according to Fuchs I've just
ordered the scientific find of the century cremated. How do
you think I feel. Now fuck off!"
He turned deliberately away from the biologist and
resumed his conversation with the phlegmatic Macready.
Blair went silent, ashen-faced and suddenly suspicious. And
more than that.
He was terrified.
It was deep night outside the station, the sky obscured by
the racing clouds that were the harbingers of the storm
Bennings had forecast. No stars shone through the
gathering clouds, no eerily beautifuly aurora decorated the
heavens with its delicate pastel strokes.
There was no sound save the wind and the pattering of
ice particles against corrugated metal siding. A faint flare of
lightning, wild and distant, momentarily threw the camp
buildings into ghostly silhouette.
It was toasty warm inside Macready's shack. The glare
from the single naked light bulb fell equally on unclad
pinups and garish travel posters.
At the moment, the pilot was leaning over the one table,
carefully setting a tiny screw in place on the side of his
recently mended, oversized chessboard.
Across the table his busty, inflatable companion occupied
the other chair. She was the ideal chess partner—quiet, not
argumentative, and she didn't guzzle his secret stock of
booze. His sombrero hung down her back, keeping her in
place. Hawaiian music, as authentically Polynesian as the
Volkswagens choking Waikiki, rose melodiously from the
stereo.
"All set," he informed his companion. "About time, too. I
was getting sick of that little board they have in the rec
room." He put the screwdriver aside, lifted his glass and
offered a toast, a wide grin on his face.
"To us, my dear." The inflatable figure moved slightly in
the warm air blowing from Macready's wall heater. He
clinked his glass against the one he'd prepared for her, then
took a long slug from his own.
Settling down in his chair he turned the renovated
machine on. A red "ready" light winked to life in one corner
and he let out a grunt of satisfaction.
"Now go easy on me, Esperanza," he told the figure
across the table. "Remember, I'm just a beginner. And
remember what happened last time." He entered his first
move.
The set answered for Esperanza, whose bloated plastic
lips could not move. "Rook takes bishop at queen four, rook
takes pawn at queen two, rook takes queen at queen one.
Check-mate-mate-mate."
"Aw shit." Macready turned the machine off and flipped
up the panel concealing the intricate programming circuitry.
A screwdriver and several printed circuits got tossed onto
the board, without consideration for the pieces they
dislodged. Macready grabbed his drink and summarily
downed the rest of the shot glass' amber contents.
"Sorry, hon," he apologized to the plastic diva. "I know
you did your best. You've got to lay off the hard stuff. It
blows your game all to hell." He looked around. "We'll try
again in a few minutes. First we lubricate your opponent,
then the board." He reached inside the nearby ice bucket
and brought his fingers out, dripping.
"Never any damn ice around here," he muttered
disconsolately. He pushed back in his chair, rose resignedly
and headed for the door. A small ice pick of the kind favored
by Norris for more important excavations hung from a hook
nailed into the wall.
The pilot removed the instrument and unlatched the
door. He let the wind blow it inward about a foot before
kicking the wedge into position at its base.
Five minutes outside in the Antarctic night, dressed in
light clothes as he was, and you'd freeze to death. But be
would only be outside for a minute. A large bank of ice
crested against the side of the cabin. He started chipping at
it with the pick, holding the ice bucket underneath. He
grumbled as he worked, the skin on the back of his neck
already turning numb.
"Now in Mexico, in Tahiti, they got ice. They got ice
coming out of their ears." He hammered away with the pick.
The ice was being stubborn.
Ah, Tahiti, he thought to himself as he worked, trying to
warm himself with memories. Now there was a place to run a
chopper. Which he had, for a year, until a falling out with the
owner of the scenic flight service had shattered that
relationship and sent him packing in search of another job.
Green and warm, that was Tahiti. No snakes, no scorpions,
lots of good food, plenty of happy tourist ladies wanting
company and consoling (tourist ladies only because the
local vahines were all married or engaged, despite what the
travel brochures implied). Flowers and warmth all year
round. Now if they could only do something about the
French . . .
A clanking sound interrrupted his reverie. He frowned,
turning away from the ice bank. His fingers were slightly
numb at the tips, but that didn't bother him. He hadn't been
outside long enough to be damaged. He pushed his ice into
the bucket and took a step toward the open door.
There it was again: metal rubbing against metal. That
was funny. It would take a real idiot to be working outside
this late at night.
 Sometimes the door catches in the main building failed,
their special lubricating oil having frozen up or a leak having
deceptively sapped the protective fluid. In that case a door
could freeze shut, trapping someone outside.
Macready hesitated. Probably something had gone bust
in the electrical system. That happened a lot. But that kind
of damage was nearly always repairable from inside, safe
from the weather.
Of course, somebody might have gotten bored with the
attractions of the rec room and decided to run a private
check on an outside experiment or piece of equipment.
Maybe Childs was out checking some machinery, or even a
sleepless Norris his seismographs.
If the door had gone tight on one of them, they might be
pounding to alert someone inside. And if the others were off
in their quarters or the recreation area, well, the wind was
loud and it would be tough to hear someone flailing at a
door.
Damn. Just when he and Esperanza were about to get it
on. Oh well. The lady would just have to wait.
Reentering the shack, he removed the wedge and pushed
the door shut. Putting the fresh ice reluctantly aside, he
wiggled into his outside clothes and downed a last swallow
of warming liquor.
He pulled the door carefully shut behind him. Using the
steadying guide ropes he started toward the main building.
Snow scudded across the planks of the walkway.
There was the sound again, near the rear of the main
structure. He changed direction, then stopped. The noise
had vanished and wasn't repeated. He cursed silently. If he'd
bundled up and gone outside this time of night for nothing .
..
He turned a slow circle in the darkness. The dim outlines
of the two helicopters glimmered in the light of the overhead
outside lamps. He had a sudden thought.
 Maybe the noise he'd heard hadn't been caused by
anyone. The wind was blowing hard now and getting
stronger as the anticipated storm rolled in off the Ross Ice
Shelf. It was possible that one of the guy wires holding the
copters in place had come loose. The end of a cable blowing
around in the wind would cause an intermittent metallic
banging like the one he'd heard.
Hell. The birds were his responsibility. As long as he was
dressed for it he might as well make a quick check and make
sure everything was okay. He'd save himself a lot of trouble
if something had come loose by fixing it now, before the full
winter storm struck the outpost.
Changing direction, he started down another walkway,
heading toward the machines. He checked the nearest guy
wires first. Everything looked tight, the wires thrumming
softly in the wind.
He was slogging around the nearest copter when he
noticed that the door to the cockpit was ajar. Now that was
odd. Also dangerous. He walked over and opened the door
cautiously.
The cockpit was empty (of course it's empty, you idiot).
He traced his anxiety to Blair's hysteria that afternoon in the
hallway, when he'd been talking with Garry. It was all the
biologist's fault, getting everyone on edge the way he had.
Garry was right about that. Damn inconsiderate egghead.
Ought to keep his crazier speculations to himself.
He fumbled for a flashlight, switched it on and scanned
the cockpit interior.
The control board was a mess. Dials were shattered,
instrumentation hammered to bits, the console itself cracked
in several places. Shards of broken heavy-duty plastic filled
the floor of the cockpit like olive-hued snow. The two
steering columns were bent. Exposed wires were
everywhere, having been snipped and shredded. Their
exposed copper tips reminded Macready, unpleasantly, of
the tendon things that had bound the two dogs together.
 In disbelief he played the beam from the flashlight over
the destruction, trying to assess the extent of the damage.
Then another unexpected sound interrupted him.
The explosion came from somewhere near the main part
of camp. It was soft, muffled by the wind, but he could still
recognize the report of a gun.
Oh Christ, be thought wildly, what now? He left the
flashlight and the copter, making sure the door was locked
tight, and stumbled down the walkway back toward the
central compound.
Once inside he followed the voices of confusion, the
shouts of men only half awake. Rounding a turn he nearly
ran over Palmer and Bennings.
"Mac, you okay?" his assistant shouted at him. Palmer ran
past him without waiting for an answer, looking far soberer
than normal. Bennings kept pace with him and Macready
chased them both.
"Yeah, I'm fine. What the hell's going on? I thought I
heard a gun."
"It's Blair," the younger man told him as they raced
through the corridor. "He's gone berserk."
"He's in the communications room," Bennings added.
"Got a gun, all right. I hear he beat on Sanders something
fierce."
They rounded another turn, Macready shredding outer
clothing as he ran.
Nervous men flanked the entrance to the
communications room. Macready slowed; he noticed that no
one was standing anywhere near the open doorway.
Garry leaned around the corner and peeked inside. A
gunshot, startlingly loud in the narrow corridor, forced him
back. In its wake came the sound of breaking plastic. The
station manager dropped to his knees. This time he was able
to peer inside.
Sanders lay on the floor close by. He was groaning and
holding his head with both hands. There was some blood.
Blair's edgy glances hallward were at eye level and he didn't
see the floor-hugging Garry. The biologist was trying to focus
a small pistol on the doorway with one hand. The other
gripped a fire axe that Blair wielded awkwardly but with
considerable effect against the complex telecommunications
equipment.
Garry winced at the sight of the damage. Sanders didn't
appear badly injured, but the tone of the biologist's voice
combined with the crazed expression on his face convinced
the station manager it would be prudent not to make any
hasty moves.
"Anybody interferes, I'll kill!" the scientist was screaming
toward the hall. Whammm . . . the high-gain amplifier
became scrap. "Nobody's getting in or out of this camp."
Macready addressed his companions. "I heard something
funny so I went out to investigate. He smashed one of the
choppers up good. Childs, go check the other one and the
tractor. Maybe we can do something with the one he
smashed up if he got to the other as well."
The big mechanic nodded and sped off down the corridor.
The axe descended on the main radio once more, further
reducing its delicate parts to electronic mush. "You think I'm
crazy!" Blair shouted at them, his gun hovering over the
entrance. "Fine! Think whatever the hell you want. Most of
you don't know what's going on, but I'm damned sure some
of you do!"
Another vicious crunch echoed through the hallway.
"The back window," Norris suggested softly. "A couple of
us could maybe surprise him."
"And maybe not," argued Macready, thinking fast. "Too
damn dangerous."
"I hear you whispering out there!" Blair yelled. "Go ahead
and whisper, but for God's sake listen to me.
"You think this thing wants to become animals? Dogs
can't make it a thousand miles to the sea. No skuas to
imitate this time of year, no penguins this far inland.
Nothing. Except us. Don't you understand? It wanted to
become us!" He brought the axe down one more time on
something delicate and irreparable.
A gust of cool air preceded Childs's return. He pulled up
behind Macready, panting hard. Snow flecked his beard. His
report was grim.
"He got both choppers and the tractor."
"Not the tractor too?" Bennings said in disbelief.
Childs nodded vigorously. "I don't know how bad yet. The
tractor looks like it's in better shape than the chopper.
Tougher construction, simpler controls. I didn't stick around
to check if he got under the hood. Figured I might be able to
help back here." He gestured with a finger. "Course in a
minute it might not make any difference."
Macready saw the station manager readying his Magnum.
"Garry . . . wait a minute." The other man glanced up at him,
pistol at the ready.
"You got something in mind, Mac?"
The pilot looked over at Norris. "Fuse box."
The geophysicist glanced toward the station manager.
Garry considered briefly, then nodded his assent. Norris took
off down the hall, moving fast.
Macready went the other way. The recreation room was
deserted. He picked up one of the card tables, folded its legs
beneath the top, and double-timed it back to the
communication room.
Blair was still babbling, still swinging the axe. "Can't you
see?" he was raving at no one in particular. "If one cell of
this thing got out in a decent carrier host it could infect
every living thing oh Earth. Nothing could stop it, nothing!
All it needs is any creature with a halfway competent brain.
A bird, a mouse, anything.
"Of course, a man would be better. Much better. More
efficient." A high giggling came from the distraught
biologist. "And this thing, oh, it's very efficient."
 Macready balanced the table against his belt buckle,
moved close to the doorjamb and tried to make his voice
sound understanding.
"It's me, Blair. Macready. Look, maybe you're right about
all this. Maybe we aren't understanding you. But you've got
to remember that we're not trained scientists, most of us.
We're hewers of wood and drawers of water for you research
boys. So you've got to try and make us understand.
"But not like this. We've got to talk it over, face to face,
like reasonable men. How can you expect us to act sensibly
if you don't?" His grip on the table tightened. "I'm unarmed,
Blair, and I'm coming in."
"No you're not!" There was naked panic in the biologist's
voice. "Nobody's coming in. I don't trust any of you!"
Macready was counting seconds. Norris ought to have
reached the circuit breakers by now. Since the chief still had
his Magnum that meant Blair couldn't have anything bigger
than one of the little target twenty-twos. The table wouldn't
stop a twenty-two short, but it might deflect it or at least
slow it down some. And the moving table would make a
lousy target.
"If you're right," he said toward the opening, "we've all
got to stick together."
" 'Stick together,' " Blair repeated. "Ha ha, that's a good
one, Mac. That's real funny. Stick together. Sure we do. Like
the dogs. Remember the dogs, Mac?" His voice turned
threatening. "I'm not going to end up like that."
The lights went out. Macready crouched and charged into
the suddenly black room as Blair's pistol roared. In the
instant before darkness had descended on the camp
Macready had caught a glimpse of the biologist standing
defiantly in front of the ruined communications console, gun
in one hand and fire axe waving in the other.
Then the table struck something hard but moveable and
they went down in a heap. Macready flailed away with his
right hand, groping with the other. He struck something
yielding and was rewarded with a grunt of pain. His other
hand crept up an arm until it reached something metallic.
By then there were half a dozen other bodies helping him
as the rest of the men piled onto the screaming, deranged
biologist.
Macready, Fuchs, and Dr. Copper half-carried, half-
escorted the glassy-eyed Blair toward the tool shed, which
lay some seventy-five yards from the main compound. Blair
stumbled along unresistingly and gave them no trouble.
The clouds had merged into a solid mass that obliterated
all the stars from view. It looked as if Bennings's forecast was
coming to pass. The wind hadn't picked up much, but the air
was definitely colder. Soon they'd have to wear masks in
addition to snow goggles if they wanted to go outside.
The shed was larger than Macready's and boasted two
windows, triple-paned like those in the compound. Childs
had switched on a portable electric heater earlier and the
temperature in the shed was comfortable. Its workbench
would not be used for a while. Not while Blair was occupying
the room.
Fuchs and Macready eased the biologist down onto the
single cot. If anything, Blair seemed more stunned by what
he'd done than any of his companions.
Copper helped remove his outer clothing. Without parka,
gloves, and down vest the biologist wouldn't try to go
anywhere. Then Copper rolled up the man's right sleeve and
swabbed his arm with disinfectant. There was no protest
from the recipient as the sedative entered his bloodstream.
The doctor removed the needle, swabbed the puncture
site a second time and slipped the empty hypo back into its
holding case. He took hold of Blair's wrist and checked a
watch as the biologist blinked up at him.
"Why am I here?"
"It's for your own protection, Blair," Copper told him
sternly, still eyeing the watch.
 "And mainly for ours," Macready added for good measure.
Copper finished checking Blair's pulse, then turned to
depart. Fuchs followed him.
Macready paused at the door. "Anything special you want
for supper?" There was no reply from the disconsolate figure
seated morosely on the cot. Blair didn't look up at the pilot,
but continued staring off into the distance.
Macready shrugged, closed the door carefully behind him
and double-checked it to make sure the heavy lock was in
place. Copper had already started down the walkway toward
the compound.
Fuchs joined Macready in the lee of the cabin. He picked
up one of the boards they'd brought with them and began
nailing it over the first window. A few small tools remained
inside the shed. They might be used to break through the
glass but they wouldn't get through the one-by-fours the
two men were nailing in place. Given the biologist's slate of
mind, it was conceivable he might try to break out despite
the lack of proper clothing. The boards would keep him
safely inside.
"Leave a bit of an opening so he can see out," Macready
instructed the assistant biologist. "We don't want him to feel
too penned up. He's paranoid enough as it is. Besides, he
probably didn't know what he was doing."
"Wanna bet?" Fuchs drove a nail crookedly into the thin
metal and the wood backing. "Tell that to Sanders."
"You know what I mean," said Macready. Blair's droopy-
eyed, heavily drugged features suddenly loomed up against
the window. Macready put the hammer down, raised his
voice so his words would penetrate the glass.
"How you doin' in there, old boy? No hard feelings. Just
doin' my job. I didn't mean to hit you so hard, but you know
how it is. Hard to be polite when somebody's got a gun stuck
in your face.
"Copper says you'll be all right after a while. He thinks it
was all the pressure got to you. Nobody's blaming you for
what you did. Leastwise I'm not. Anyone can go snaky out
here under normal conditions. Too much poking around with
an alien whatsis would send anybody diving off the pier."
Blair's reply barely reached them through the glass. "I
don't know who to trust, Mac." He was almost crying.
"I know what you mean, Blair." Macready forced himself
to sound convivial. "Trust's a tough thing to come by these
days. Just trust in the Lord."
There was a pause. Macready was about to leave the first
window and start work on the second when Blair's, anxious
whisper reached him.
"Watch Clark."
Macready hesitated. "What?"
"Clark. Watch him close." Through the foggy glass
Macready could see the biologist's gaze dart furtively from
left to right, as though he was afraid something else might
be listening. "Ask him why he didn't kennel the dog right
away." The face disappeared from view.
"Hey, Blair!" Macready called to him. "What the devil are
you talking about? Blair?"
But despite all the pilot's entreaties he could not
convince the biologist to say anything more . . .
 A large hole in the snow served the camp as a trash dump
for nonbiological wastes. It was well off to one side and
framed over with a wooden roof to keep anyone from
accidentally stumbling into it.
Human by-products were treated differently, out of
necessity and experience born of a generation of modern
Arctic exploration. They were chemically treated and then
stored in drums for burial much farther from camp.
In most hostile-terrain climates simple septic tanks would
serve for such material, but not in Antarctica. Not where
everything froze solid and steadfastly refused to biodegrade.
You had to be careful what you did with your waste or it
would hang around and haunt you.
Not much daylight left this far south, Bennings thought
as he upended the trash container. It was slung on a
handcart mounted on skids instead of wheels. He backed the
cart away from the hole and kicked the covering door shut,
rubbing his gloved hands as he studied the sky.
Soon winter would take hold of the southern continent
and it would really begin to get cold. The men would have to
retreat permanently into their warren to wait for the return
of the sun.
Palmer and Childs slaved over the least mangled of the
helicopters. Garry still held out some hope that one of them
could be repaired in time to make a run to McMurdo Sound,
where its pilot would trade disarming information for
reinforcements, supplies, expert advice, and, at the very
least, a new radio.
The old one was a pile of sharp-edged plastic flotsam in
the telecom room. Any thoughts of repairing an old-style
instrument would have been out of the question. But all the
camp's electronic equipment was solid-state. So there was a
slim chance of fixing up a rudimentary broadcast unit.
Unfortunately, trying to link dozens of chips and other
tiny, rainbow-colored components into something
resembling a working piece of communications equipment
was a task for someone who combined the talents of a Bell
labs instructor and a master of jigsaw puzzles.
Sanders was neither. Besides, his head still hurt. He
adjusted the large bandage wrapped around his forehead
and tried to make some sense of the carnage. From time to
time his vision went blurry on him. Matters weren't helped
by the minuscule size of some of the requisite components.
Those which had survived Blair's rampage lay in a neat
pile on the desk in front of him, looking like pieces of
matinee sugar candy. Each had a number stamped on its
frontside. Circuit boards were arranged around the heap in a
semicircle. The boards also had numbers printed on them.
Empty sockets glared from the boards, needing
replacements. All you had to do was match the numbers on
the replacement modules with those on the boards.
Sure.
"I'll see what I can do," Sanders was telling Norris. "I told
Garry I'd give it a try. But most of these units," and he made
a sweeping gesture that encompassed the majority of ruined
equipment, "are designed for factory repair. I don't have any
equipment for fixing microminiature circuits." A magnifying
glass lay close by his right hand. Sanders picked it up and
halfheartedly began searching for the break where one
board was supposed to link with another.
"They didn't teach me much about fixing these things in
communications school."
Norris grinned and patted him gently on one shoulder.
"That's all right. They didn't teach you much about working
them, either."
Sanders responded with something in Spanish, which
Norris couldn't understand. But he thought it sounded
nontechnical.
In the lingering darkness of the Antarctic winter, morning
was reduced to an abstract remembrance of another world.
Your body functioned according to a preset schedule, not
badly confused natural urges.
Come breakfast time you had to make do without the
comforting arrival of a warming sunrise. Nauls did his best to
compensate for its absence with a buffet of eggs, bacon,
toast, jellies and butter, country-fried potatoes, and hot or
cold cereal.
The feast was necessary as well as welcome. Below sixty
degrees latitude, calories vanished as fast as civilization.
There were no fat researchers or workers at any of the many
international stations scattered around the continent. Even
if you'd been overweight all your life, a year's stay in
Antarctica would melt away your surplus bulk. It was a
phenomenon even the earliest explorers had noticed.
The only ones who could keep weight on in Antarctica
were the seals and whales. Most of the men and women who
sojourned near the South Pole agreed there were easier ways
to lose weight, however.
The mess hall was a long, narrow room, not much wider
than the access corridors that connected it to the rest of the
camp. At the moment it was filling up with hungry, half-
awake men.
Copper intercepted Nauls as the cook was bringing in
another load of toast and biscuits. The doctor slipped an
innocuous-looking blue capsule onto the tray.
Nauls studied it and smiled at the doc. "Hey, I already
took my vitamins today."
"It's not for you," Copper told him quietly. "Put this in
Blair's juice before you take him his tray."
"You still think he's dangerous?"
"I hope not. But he needs more than one night to cool
down, emotionally as well as physically. This'll help him to
relax." He nudged the pill away from the toast.
 Nauls shrugged. "You're the doctor."
He was just setting the tray down on the table after
having pocketed the pill when Clark burst into the room.
Everyone turned to stare at the dog handler. Conversation
ceased. He was pale and out of breath.
"The dogs . . ." he gasped. Without elaborating or waiting
for a response, he whirled and shot back down the hallway.
"Shit, what now?" somebody muttered as eggs and coffee
were abandoned.
The kennel was empty. Dry dog food lay untouched in the
metal trough. The big water can was full to the brim. There
was no sign of any disturbance.
At the far end of the kennel was the ingenious dog door.
It led to a narrow ramp that rose to the surface. Clark used it
to take the dogs outside when it was time to exercise them,
so he wouldn't have to run them through a camp hallway.
Wind whistled along the door's edges.
Clark and Garry examined the latch, which normally held
the door shut. It was carefully designed so that no dog could
accidentally open it.
"It's not broken?" The station manager spoke quietly as
he fingered the insulated backing of the metal.
"It's not." Clark tapped the latch. "This was wide open
when I came in this morning. I know I latched it. I always
check it before going to bed."
Garry's gaze went to the ceiling. "Outside clothes. Let's
get topside and have a look around."
Daily duties were momentarily put aside as the men
scrambled into heavy outer clothing.
You could see outside, but just barely. Blowing snow
obscured the harsh yellow glare that fell from the argon
lamps ringing the compound.
The snow was light and the dog tracks were clearly
visible on the ground above the kennel. They led from the
ramp straight out into the darkness. The men gathered
around as Clark bent over them.
 "Three sets of paw prints," he announced, tracing them
with his glove. "No question about that. All three of them
took off together."
Macready stood nearby, writing with a gas-powered pen
on a small pad.
Copper was staring northwestward, into the last remnants
of daylight, shielding his goggles from the blowing ice
particles. "How long do you suppose they've been gone?"
Clark pondered the question. "I haven't seen them since
checking the latch last night. Could be as much as ten or
twelve hours."
Macready looked up from his list. His face was grim as he
followed Copper's gaze. "They couldn't have gotten far in
this weather. Probably they had to stop soon after they left
and hole up somewhere for the night."
Several of the men turned uncertainly toward the pilot.
"You're not thinking of going after them, are you?" Garry
asked him. "I know I've pushed you a little hard about flying
in bad weather here lately, Mac, but . . ."
"Damn right I'm going after them," Macready snapped,
putting away the pen.
"What in hell for?" Norris eyed the pilot as though
Macready were proposing an unnecessary trip to the seventh
level of Dante's Inferno.
Norris continued. "Even if Blair's right and one of them
isn't . . . isn't a dog anymore, they'll just die out there.
There's no food, not even a solitary penguin. Not even a
damn spider. They're over a thousand miles from anything
but ice and rock."
"Besides which," Palmer put in with unaccustomed
lucidity, "the choppers aren't going to be ready for days, if
ever."
Macready ignored them both and handed the list he'd
been preparing to Bennings. "Get these things out of supply
and meet me over by the snowmobiles."
 Garry stared at the pilot in disbelief. "You're not going to
catch them in one of those with the head start they've got."
"Like I said, they probably spent most of the night
huddled somewhere for warmth. They're not bats, dammit.
And we don't know that they've been gone the whole ten or
twelve hours." He looked sharply at his assistant. "Palmer,
how long would it take you to strap those big four-cylinder
carburetors onto the bikes?"
"What fo . . . oh, yeah. I get you." He smiled, relishing the
opportunity. He'd always wanted to try that with the
snowmobiles, but both Garry and Mac had forbidden it. Now
he'd have the chance. Not the same as monkeying with a
Corvette block, but it'd be fun nonetheless.
"Then get a move on," Macready urged him. The younger
man turned and jogged off toward the big maintenance
barn. "Childs, you come with me. We got work to do."
Macready put his arm around the big mechanic and the
two strolled off into the snow, chatting animatedly. Slightly
bewildered, the rest of the men watched them go. Ice and
snow swirled around them.
Garry shouted after the pilot. "What are you going to do
when you catch up to them?"
Bennings was reading the list Macready had handed to
him. "Holy shit," he muttered aloud.
The station manager looked over at him, noticing the list.
"What's that about?"
Bennings handed it over. "Whatever he's planning to do,
he isn't fucking around."
Garry studied the list, then looked up and off to his left.
But the two men were already out of sight, swallowed up by
the darkness and blowing snow.
Childs worked fast. He was familiar with the equipment
Macready had requisitioned, in addition to which he'd used
some of it very recently. The adjustments he was making
weren't complicated, just highly illegal. But Garry knew
about them, and be hadn't raised any objections. Not yet.
 Probably figures it's our funeral, the mechanic thought as
he tightened a screw. And he's probably right. But as far as
Childs was concerned, Macready was more right. The way
Childs saw it, they didn't have a choice. If those dogs were
things now and not dogs, and if they somehow, someway
managed to make their way into another unsuspecting camp
...
Childs came from a neighborhood where people had died
because no one wanted to get involved, because no one
wanted to risk themselves to help the fellow across the
street. It made him sick, which is why he'd moved away as
soon as he was old enough.
He wasn't going to let that sort of thing happen here.
He tightened the screw a last half turn, then put the
screwdriver aside and raised the torch. Holding it firmly in
his left hand he opened the new valves with the right.
There was a brief sputtering sound. Uncertain flames
spurted from the nozzle. He slowly pulled back on the lever
fitted to the metal.
A sudden roar erupted in the rear of the workshed and a
streak of fire shot fifteen feet across the dark ice.
Childs shut the torch down, frowning as he chose another
tool from the chest at his feet. The arc was too wide and he
was losing distance. Have to narrow it down some.
Macready strolled out of the shed and came up behind
him. The mechanic glanced up from his work. "You see
that?"
The pilot was looking out across the ice. "Yeah. Looks
pretty good."
"If I narrow the field I can get maybe another five, six feet
out of it."
Macready rested a hand on Childs's shoulder. "Forget it.
I'd rather have the wider coverage."
"Okay. You're the boss." Childs put back the unused
socket wrench and rose. "How's Palmer coming?"
 Macready glanced back toward the shed. "Just about
through. That kid does better work stoned than most guys
do with a clear head."
"If there were any clear heads around here," Childs
countered angrily, "we wouldn't have to be doing this."
Macready had no comeback for that one.
Palmer was bent over the snowmobile engine. The
cowling was up and you couldn't see his head, but you could
hear him working away at the machine's guts. The other
snowmobile sat nearby, trimmed and ready to run. Its rear
seat had been replaced with a fiberglass storage box.
A wheelbarrow on skids slid into the room. Bennings blew
on his gloved hands, a gesture more reflexive than useful,
and shut the shed door behind him. He pulled off the gloves
and sauntered over to peer past Palmer's arched back.
"How's it coming?"
Palmer glanced up at him. "Almost through." Mechanic's
grease darkened his face.
The back door to the shed opened, admitting another
blast of frigid air along with Childs and Macready. The big
man had disconnected the torch from its tank and carried it
gingerly.
Macready noticed the meteorologist immediately. "You
get the stuff, Bennings?"
"Garry hemmed and hawed a little, but only a little." He
indicated the wheelbarrow he'd brought.
"Right." Macready moved toward it, slipping off his parka.
Childs was folding up the thick hose attached to the torch
and packing it in the storage container mounted on the rear
of the waiting snowmobile.
The pilot opened the lid of the wheelbarrow, glanced
perfunctorily at the contents, and then moved a tow sled
into position behind the other snowmobile. A flexible cable
linked the two together.
"Final check," Bennings announced, reading from a list. It
was the same list Macready had given him earlier. "Box of
dynamite already fused, box of thermite likewise, three
shotguns, box of flares, two flare guns, thirty cans gasoline
and a case of medicinal alcohol." He put the list in a pocket
and looked over at Macready. "Going to get it drunk if you
can't blow it up?"
Macready, making sure the trailer hitch was tight, ignored
the meteorologist's sally.
"Okay. Let's load 'em."
The sun didn't actually rise this time of year in the
southern polar regions. It just peeked hesitantly over the ice
and spent a few hours crawling along the horizon until,
seemingly exhausted by the effort, it vanished abruptly into
the lingering night.
The snowmobiles rumbled smoothly across the twilight
landscape, their engines thrumming with unaccustomed
extra horsepower thanks to Palmer's ministrations and the
addition of the larger carburetors. Bennings piloted the one
pulling the trailer while Macready and Childs doubled up on
the other.
From time to time they stopped to check the trail. Snow
whistled around them, but the flakes were tiny and stayed
airborne more often than they settled to the ground.
The dogs had been running hard and fast. Their paw
prints were widely spaced. So far the tracks had remained
visible. That couldn't last forever, they knew. Soon wind and
snow would fill them in. It was a race to see which would
give out first: the dogs or their tracks.
Macready took regular sightings his binoculars, the three
men rotating driving shifts. Now something dark and
irregular showed against the ice just ahead and slightly to
their right.
He tapped Childs on the back, keeping his balance on the
passenger seat. "Something over there!" he shouted over
the roar of the engine. "Over there!" He pointed several
times to indicate direction.
 Childs nodded acknowledgment and angled the vehicle
slightly to the right. Off to his left, Bennings swerved to
match the new course.
Soon you could see it without binoculars. The two
snowmobiles slowed as they approached.
It was surrounded by dog tracks. The prints were crowded
and repetitive, signs of a short but intense struggle having
disturbed the snow.
The dark lump was the half-eaten remains of a husky. Its
hind legs and lower body had been picked clean. Torn hide
flapped loosely in the wind. The top half of the body, from
the sternum up, was missing.
Macready turned a slow circle, searching first with his
eyes and then through the binoculars. There was no sign of
the missing part of the dog or of its two companions.
"What is it?" Childs muttered, staring distastefully at the
mangled husky.
Macready put the binoculars back in their case and
walked out into the snow, following the line of still visible
tracks. The line was narrower now.
"Maybe dinner," he muttered. The dim horizon showed
nothing but faint light and a lowering sky.
"Dogs don't eat each other." Bennings kicked at the
frozen body. "I'm no expert like Clark, but I know that much.
A dog would rather starve than eat its own kind."
"I know," Macready said softly.
Childs had moved away from the body and was turning a
slow half-circle. "Where's the other half?"
"Not around here," Macready told him. "I checked with
the binocs. Probably took it along with them."
"For the next meal?" Childs spat into the snow.
"I'd think so. See, that's what Garry wasn't figuring on.
One dog couldn't make it a thousand miles. One dog living
off one or two others . . ." He let the obvious go unsaid. "Very
convenient, having a steady food supply that travels with
you on its own legs."
 He went over to the snowmobile trailer, flipped up the lid
and removed a two-gallon can of gasoline He unscrewed the
cap, then glanced over at Bennings.
"They're still moving in a straight line. Where are these
tracks headed?"
"Nowhere," the meteorologist insisted. "Just straight
toward the ocean."
"That's something, anyway." The pilot silently poured the
contents of the can over the remains. The men stepped
clear. Macready pulled a crumpled piece of paper from a
parka, pocket and lit it with his lighter, tossing it toward the
remains. The bone and skin caught instantly and burned
with a steady flame in the steady wind.
"Let's move."
Some of the initial enthusiasm was seeping away from his
companions. They'd already traveled a long way from the
warmth and comfort of the outpost. Now the gnawed
remains of the sled dog had again reminded them of just
how deadly an adversary they were pursuing.
"Maybe we ought to think this through again, Mac,"
Childs murmured half apologetically. He nodded toward the
horizon. "They could be hours ahead of us."
Bennings surveyed the feeble sun. "Gonna get dark soon,
too. Supposed to be fifty below tonight."
Macready, straddling the snowmobile towing the supply
trailer, ignored them both. "Turn back if you want to. I'm
going after them."
His companions exchanged an uncertain look, then
started toward the machines.
"He's crazy for wanting to go on with this," Childs
muttered unhappily.
"Yeah?" Bennings climbed onto the seat behind the
mechanic. "Maybe not. Maybe we're the ones who are crazy
for thinking of turning back."
"Ah, shut up." Childs gunned the engine.
 Only a slight glow came from a sun the color of stale
sherbet as the snowmobiles continued to follow the fading
dog tracks. Quite unexpectedly, the trail changed direction.
Macready slowed to a stop. Childs and Bennings pulled up
along side him, their engines idling roughly.
"What's wrong, Mac?" the mechanic asked.
The pilot broke snow from his beard. The tracks had
turned toward a ridge of low hills and snowcapped bluffs. It
was very cold now.
"They turn off that way."
Childs rose in his seat and stared off in the indicated
direction. "You think we can get in there?"
"As long as it doesn't get too steep," Macready told him.
"You still with me?"
Childs looked back at Bennings. The meteorologist
nodded. "Hell, it's too late to turn back tonight anyway.
Might as well keep going 'til we stop for sleep. We can argue
about what to do tomorrow morning."
"That's fair enough." Macready resumed his seat and
veered his machine toward the rocks.
The terrain was more rugged than the pilot had
supposed. High cliffs of solid ice rose from the little canyon
they were exploring. Pressure ridging had been at work here
in ancient times, as well as seismic forces. He felt like an ant
crawling up a broken mirror.
They'd been using the snowmobile's headlamps since
they'd entered the canyon. The sun hardly supplied enough
light to see your own feet. But at least the dog tracks stood
out starkly. The shielding cliffs had protected them from the
blowing snow.
Bennings was uncomfortable in the maze. Out on the ice
flats nothing could spring out at you, catch you by surprise.
He wasn't in the mood for surprises. Not here.
What am I doing here, he thought? I should be back in
camp, taking anemometer readings, watching the
barometer, figuring fronts and lows and plotting percentage
drops in temperature gradients against old figures in
manuals.
Instead I'm freezing to death while we hunt a couple of
dogs that maybe aren't dogs because their DNA has been
altered by the invasion of something a hundred millennia
old that got buried in the ice and dug up by a bunch of
overeager unsuspecting Norwegians who—
He blinked. The snowmobiles were slowing down. He tried
to see around Childs's bulk.
Dead ahead, caught in the light from the snowmobiles
headlamps, was a single husky. Bennings didn't know
whether to feel frightened or gratified.
The dog could have cared less. It sat in the middle of the
little canyon, its back turned unconcernedly toward the
approaching men, and munched contentedly on the upper
half of the dog carcass they'd encountered out on the plain.
The lack of fear or any other recognizable reaction made
Macready doubly cautious. He slowed his own vehicle and
raised a hand. Childs and Bennings eased up alongside him.
He pointed at their quarry. It was barely twenty yards
away and still gave no sign that it was aware of their
presence. "What d'you make of that?"
"That's our runner, no question about that," Childs
murmured. "It's finishing up its buddy, just like you said it
would."
Macready carefully searched the canyon's rim, first the
right side and then the left. Nothing could be seen among
the crags. Nothing moved.
"Why the hell's it just sitting there?"
"Who gives a shit." Bennings was too cold for complex
thinking. "Let's torch it and move on."
"I'm not sure . . ." Macready began.
Bennings interrupted him. "Don't go clever on me now,
Mac. Either we finish this one now or I'm taking one of the
mobiles, and heading home."
 Childs was already unloading the torch and hooking it to
the tank. Macready shrugged, arming himself with a
thermite bomb. When Childs was ready they started up the
sides of the canyon, each hugging the cliff wall. Bennings
stood on guard at the snowmobiles in case the dog might try
running past them at the last minute.
As Childs and Macready approached, the dog continued
to ignore them, seemingly content merely to chew its food.
The mechanic's eyes roved the landscape, trying to see into
the darkness beyond the animal, into the area out of reach
of the snowmobiles' headlights.
"Where's the other one, Mac? Where in hell's the other
one?"
Macready shouted back toward the machines. "There's
only the one of 'em here, Bennings! Keep a sharp eye out for
the other one."
The meteorologist yelled his understanding, took out a
flashlight and began playing its beam over the rocks off to
his right.
Macready spoke to the dog while trying to look four ways
at once. His voice was tense, coaxing. "Where's your buddy,
boy? Huh? You can tell us. Dog's best friend, remember?
Where'd your friend get to?"
Not only didn't the animal react, it continued to ignore
their approach. Macready took out his own flashlight,
uneasily playing it over crevices and possible hiding places
in the cliff sides. Still nothing.
"Screw this. Childs, let that thing fly. Don't let up until
he's ashes. We'll find the other one later."
Childs activated the nozzle. The tip of the torch sprang to
life.
Bennings's attention was on the cliff face when
something clutched at his ankles. He looked down and
barely had time to scream as his body was yanked below the
surface. The flashlight went flying. In seconds only his head
and shoulders showed above the ice.
 Childs and Macready whirled at the sound of the scream,
and rushed back toward their companion. Only his head was
visible now. Macready stumbled, snow stinging his face as
he fell.
Something made a noise behind him, and it wasn't the
wind. He'd never heard anything quite like that noise. It was
a crackling, a snapping of something that wasn't wood or
plastic. It was organic. He thought of fried pigskins being
crumbled in a child's hand.
He rolled over. The dog was still facing away from him,
but it was no longer eating. Its hair stuck straight up like the
quills of a porcupine. As he stared it snarled, a throaty,
undoglike sound. It turned to face him. Its skin was splitting,
the mouth ripping open as something inside struggled to
emerge, like a butterfly bursting from its cocoon.
Only there was nothing in the least attractive about the
metamorphosis the husky was undergoing.
"Childs!"
The mechanic halted, his fingers tight on the torch,
uncertain who to help first. Bennings was still in sight. In
addition to his head he'd managed to get one arm out and
was clawing frantically at the slick surface. Each time his
shoulders started to emerge, something unseen would yank
him back beneath the snow.
Childs took a step back toward Macready, his attention
torn between his two companions. The dog continued to
change. It had grown larger and darker. Suddenly it leaped,
though no dog could possibly jump twenty feet in that
clinging snow.
Childs reacted instinctively as the thing attacked the
fallen Macready. He opened the flow to the torch. A stream of
fire hit the dog-thing in mid-leap. The violence of the blast
knocked it head over heels backward, a flaming ball of fur.
And something else.
The animal was howling in pain, making a sound no dog
ever made, a high-pitched screeching that reminded
Macready of fingernails dragging down a blackboard.
He got to his knees and activated the thermite cannister.
Aiming as carefully as he could in the confusion and dim
light, he heaved it past the snowmobiles. The force of the
throw sent him sprawling again.
The cannister landed a foot short of the twisting, flaming
dog-thing and exploded. The smaller fire was suddenly
enveloped in a blast of white flame.
Childs turned and started toward Bennings. The ice
beneath the meteorologist was heaving violently. Macready
scrambled to his feet and overtook the mechanic, grabbed
him by his parka and tried to pull him back.
"What's the matter?" Childs tried to shake the smaller
man off.
The pilot continued to pull at his friend, "Keep away! It'll
get you too."
"Damn it!" Childs was half-moaning, half-crying. He
repeated the curse over and over.
Suddenly Bennings's head finally vanished beneath the
surface, his body jerked out of sight by something still
unseen. The ice continued to ripple like boiling water. The
activity moved around, coming toward the two men, then
drifting away from them.
Part of the unfortunate meteorologist's body popped into
view and just as quickly was sucked beneath the surface
again. Macready and Childs watched for it to reappear,
unable to aid their companion.
"What are we going to do?" the frustrated Childs cried. He
was trying to trace the course of the subsurface heaving
with the tip of the torch.
"How the fuck do I know."
Suddenly Bennings's head and shoulders exploded
through the ice close to the snowmobiles. Something had
him in an unbreakable grip, though in the distant glow from
the headlamps they couldn't see what. To Childs it looked
like the jaws of a dog, except that no dog that ever lived had
a mouth that wide.
Bennings's heavy outer clothes began to split, stretched
to their limits as the flesh beneath burst its natural
boundaries. The clutching jaws writhed, turning the body
toward their center. A snake always turns its prey in order to
swallow it head first, Macready thought wildly. Bennings face
vanished into that fluid, shifting mouth.
He turned and dashed for the snowmobile trailer,
shouting back over his shoulder as he ran.
"Torch them!"
"But Bennings . . .!" Childs started to protest.
Macready wouldn't have recognized his own voice. "Can't
you see that he's gone? Do it . . . while we've still got the
chance to!"
Bennings . . . damn it, Bennings! Childs's teeth ground
against one another. Bennings is dead, man. That thing is
still alive. He activated the torch.
The powerful stream of fire struck the indistinguishable
mass of which Bennings was now a part. The hulking clump
of dark flesh burst into flame and ice began to melt around
it. A wailing screech filled the night air.
Macready was working like a madman at the snowmobile
trailer, frantically removing can after can of gasoline and
tossing them onto the ice.
Something hard as steel thrust out of the ground. It had
knobs and sharp projections and things like long, stiff hairs
scattered across it. It just missed Macready and went right
through the fiberglass body of the trailer.
Macready threw himself to one side. The leg yanked itself
clear of the splintered fiberglass and flailed around in search
of something to grab.
The pilot scrambled across the snow, uncapped a couple
of cans and dumped their contents on that weaving,
questing limb. Then be moved away and began pouring the
rest onto the larger mass that Childs was melting out of the
ice.
The cans went up like small bombs, further immolating
the convulsive, twitching abomination beneath the snow.
Behind them, the other dog-thing continued to burn. The
continuous screeching and mewling echoed horribly off the
walls of the little canyon, deafening the two frantic men.
Macready tossed the last can into the conflagration and
clutched at Childs's arm. "That's enough, man."
The mechanic did not seem to hear him. Glassy-eyed,
Childs continued to play the fire stream over the already
seething mass. Part of Bennings's burning skeleton showed
through the flames. If the other thing possessed a skeleton,
Macready couldn't make it out. The inferno that filled the
canyon was almost too bright to look at.
Macready finally had to step around in front of the
mechanic and grab the torch with both hands. "Childs, that's
enough! We got it."
The big man looked slowly down at him and blinked.
"Yeah. Yeah, okay Mac." He shut off the flow to the torch.
They stood there close together, their stunned faces awash
with light from the dying flames. As the blaze began to
subside, so did that damnable screeching. Soon it sounded
far away, weak and unthreatening.
It gave out entirely in a few minutes. The two fires
continued to burn. Macready and Childs waited until the last
embers had turned dark. Then the pilot emptied a few more
gallons of gas over the dark smudges staining the canyon
floor and lit them. When they burnt themselves out there
was nothing left to burn except ice and rock.
The snowmobile trailer was ruined. That thrusting leg
that had come so close to impaling Macready had shattered
not only the container but one of the supporting skis.
Macready unlatched it and they transferred the remaining
supplies to the storage box mounted over the snowmobile's
rear seat.
 Then they set off to retrace their path, speeding down the
canyon back to the glacial plain and the frozen Antarctic
night. It would have been more sensible to wait until
morning. More sensible, yes, but neither man had any
intention of spending a moment longer in that canyon, now
occupied only by the ghosts of two gargoyles whose night-
shrouded appearance would have put to shame any dozen
visages haunting far distant Notre Dame.
Macready and Childs preferred to take the chance of
freezing to death out on the clean ice . . .
 Only the uppermost sliver of sun revealed itself the
following day, signaling the beginning of the vernal equinox.
And the beginning of six months of total darkness.
The men had gathered in the recreation room. Clark sat in
a chair surrounded by his now suspicious co-workers. The
dog handler looked frazzled and sounded defensive.
"I'm teIlin you," he said for at least the tenth time, "that I
don't remember leaving the kennel unlatched."
Childs stood nearby. He was holding the well-used torch,
having shortened its range in the event it had to be
employed inside. He waved it meaningfully under Clark's
nose.
"That's bullshit! You told us after those dogs split that you
always check it."
"I always do." Clark chewed his lower lip and tried to so
confident. He wasn't. That torch was too damn close. "They
must have opened it after I closed up for the night."
"You left it open," Childs said accusingly, "so they could
get out."
Clark kept his exasperation in check, along with the
sarcastic reply that immediately came to mind. Sarcasm
wouldn't be prudent just now, considering the expressions
on the faces of the men encircling him. Childs's attitude was
that he'd be glad to try out the industrial torch indoors, if
Clark would just give him the slightest excuse.
"Would I even have told the rest of you that they had
gone if I had anything to hide?" he argued fervently. "Would
I have told you that I regularly check the latch after I'd
deliberately left it open? Be reasonable!"
"That still doesn't explain why you didn't kennel that
stray right away," Garry pointed out.
 "I told you that I couldn't find—" He paused, angrily
shoving the nozzle of the torch aside. "Keep that thing out of
my face, will you?"
Childs reached out with one hand, grabbed the handler
by the collar, and lifted him out of the chair. The mechanic
was right on the edge, had been ever since they'd returned
to camp. He was still thinking of Bennings and wondering if
they'd managed to kill him while he was still Bennings.
"Don't you be telling me—"
Nauls stepped between them and spoke sharply to the
mechanic.
"Lighten your load, sucker. You ain't the judge and
executioner around here."
Childs reluctantly let go of the dog handler. Clark
slumped back in his chair, keeping a wary eye on the
mechanic as he spoke to Nauls.
"Thanks," he said gratefully.
Childs turned his frustration and anger on the
peacemaker. "Who you trying to protect, mutherfucker? I'm
trying to tell you that this son of a bitch could be one of
them. You want one of those things that could be anybody
messing around in your kitchen, man?"
Garry separated them. No one noticed Macready out in
the hallway, watching the confrontation. He'd been outside,
rummaging around in the trash dump. He had a bundle
tucked under one arm.
"Now hold on, dammit," the station manager told the two
combatants. He struggled to keep his voice level. "We're
getting nowhere acting like this. Fighting and arguing isn't
going to prove anything. If this bit of Blair's theory about
this thing taking over cellular structures all the way up to
the brain is correct, then that dog could have gotten to
anybody. It had enough time. A whole night."
"And if it got to Clark, or anyone else," put in Copper
quietly from his seat near the big card table, "then Clark, or
anyone else, could have gotten to somebody else."
 That's about right, Macready decided. A few eyes turned
to him as he stepped into the room. But the attention was
still on the speculating doctor.
Copper cleared his throat. "What I'm saying is that,
theoretically, any of us could now be whatever the hell this
thing was. It learns fast. Too damn fast. It can be subtle when
it has to, can bide its time. Like those two changed dogs
did."
Norris shook his head, rubbing his chest and grimacing at
the slight but persistent pain there.
"It's too much to absorb all at once, Doc. I can buy the
business about the dogs. I saw that. But taking over several
of us and keeping it a secret from the rest? Hell, we all know
each other. If some alien whatsis had gained control of Clark
—" the handler stiffened at the sound of his name—"or
Childs, or me, or anyone else, wouldn't it give itself away
somehow? Wouldn't it make a mistake, do something
obviously wrong that the rest of us would pick up on?"
Copper smiled humorlessly. "If it can become enough of a
dog to fool another dog, with its acute canine senses, then
why not a man? This thing arrived here in an extraterrestrial
vehicle. It's not an animal. It's highly intelligent as well as
extremely adaptable. All it needs to survive is an organic
host to take control of. Why not a man instead of a dog?"
"It's just too damn wild," Norris argued weakly. "I can't
believe it. Not without stronger evidence than some
overcome sled dogs."
Macready pushed back the sombrero he was wearing.
"Well, you can believe it now." He dumped the dirty bundle
he was carrying onto the card table. It was the shredded pair
of long johns that Nauls had found in the kitchen waste bin.
"Nauls found this yesterday. Remember? It's ripped just
like the clothing on the Norwegian we brought back. The
same thing was happening to Bennings's clothes when
Childs and I got to him. Seems these things don't imitate
clothes. Just flesh and blood."
 "Anything organic," Copper was muttering. He pulled up
one leg of his own pants and checked the long underwear
beneath it. "Damart. Artificial. Not wool. If it was wool, the
thing might be able to imitate that, too."
The men looked from one to another, silent, thinking.
Macready picked up the ruined clothing and checked the
label on the waistband.
"It's Damart too, Doc, but there's more important
information here than that."
"For instance?" said Norris challengingly.
"For instance, the size. Large, in this case." He grinned
maliciously and studied the nervous cluster of men. His gaze
settled on the one sitting in their midst.
"What size do you wear, Clark?"
The dog handler shifted uncomfortably in his Chair. His
lower lip showed blood.
"So what if I do?" he snapped back.
"Yeah," Norris added, "what if he does? I wear a large size,
too."
"Extra large," said Childs smugly.
"Large," said Copper.
"And me too." Macready's gaze traveled around the room.
"Most of us do." The feeling of unease in the room
intensified. Macready let them stew over this new thought a
while before continuing.
"I doubt if it got to more than one or two of us. Two at the
most. It didn't have enough time for more than that.
Besides, if it had I don't think we'd be standing here
debating it right now. We'd all be trying to blow each other's
heads off, like those poor damn Norwegians. Or else we
wouldn't be trying to, which'd be worse.
"But it definitely got to someone." He let that sink in
before adding, "Somebody in this room ain't who it claims on
his driver's license."
Sanders didn't even try to conceal his fright. "Then what
are we going to do?"
 Norris turned to Copper. Fuchs was standing next to the
doctor, looking thoughtful.
"Can there be some kind of test?" the geophysicist asked.
"Surely if this things alters cell structure and other biological
functions as radically as Blair seems to think it does, there
ought to be some way of detecting the changes. Some way
of finding out who's what."
"Possibly a serum test," Copper finally whispered. "Yes,
that should work."
"Right!" Fuchs's enthusiasm was genuine. "Why not?"
"What's a serum test," the station manager wanted to
know, "and how much work's involved?"
"It's a simple blood-typing test," Copper explained. The
men crowded around him to listen. "As Blair explained, the
thing engenders severe alterations in the cell structure of its
hosts. I think that would show up in a check of any basic
bodily fluid, such as lymph or blood. Or urine, for that
matter. But a blood test would be easier, and harder to 'fix.'
"As to what's involved," he told Garry, "we mix someone's
blood with uncontaminated human blood, blood we know to
be the real thing. If we don't get the proper serum reaction,
it's at least a good indication that the person the blood was
drawn from is something other than normal."
"But this thing's takeover is complete down to mustache
hairs," Macready argued.
"But not down to follicular cells, if we could analyze one
of those hairs properly. I don't see how it could alter its new
cell structure enough to fool so basic a test. It's worth a try,
anyway it's simple and fast. If it doesn't work we can always
try something else."
"Sounds good to me, Doc, except for one thing," said
Childs.
"What's that?"
Childs looked at the assembled, anxious faces. "Whose
'uncontaminated' blood we going to use?"
 Copper smiled. "That's where we've got it. We've got
whole blood in storage." He sought the station manager's
approval. "What about it, Garry? Shall I go ahead and set it
up? Fuchs can assist me."
Garry mulled the proposition over, then turned to the
eager assistant biologist. "What's your opinion, Fuchs?"
"I think it's a helluva smart idea, chief. Blair would be the
first to approve."
The station manager looked slightly uneasy.
"Unfortunately, our senior biologist isn't in a position to be
making rational evaluations of test procedures or anything
else right now. But if you go along with the doc . . ."
"I certainly do." Fuchs nodded vigorously.
". . . then we'll give it a shot. Like you say, Doc, we can
always try something else next if this test turns out
inconclusive. How long will it take you to get ready?"
Copper considered, then ventured a conservative
estimate. "A couple of hours should be enough. Provided
that I'm not . . . interfered with."
"There'll be somebody with the two of you at all times.
Get going." He took a key off the ring hanging from his belt
and handed it to the doctor. Copper and the young biologist
headed for the infirmary.
The rest of the men milled around, chatting amiably. Now
that they were going to find out who was real and who was
faking it, they relaxed visibly.
"How'd that thing ever get to those three dogs?" Palmer
asked Macready. "I thought we stopped it in time."
"Copper isn't sure, but he thinks they may have
swallowed functioning pieces of it during the fight in the
kennel."
"And that's enough?"
"I don't see why not." The pilot was enjoying his
assistant's queasiness. "No reason why it can't take you over
from the inside out. I'd think it'd be a lot easier. The tendon-
like organs wouldn't have to reach nearly as far, if they
began growing inside your stomach instead of—"
Palmer turned away, adding weakly, "Never mind. Sorry I
asked. I'll take Copper's word for it."
"At least now maybe we'll find out if those dogs were the
last thing it got to," Macready muttered darkly. "Maybe it
didn't have time that night to get to anything else."
"Garry!" The shout came from down the corridor, faint but
imperative. "The rest of you too, come here!"
Macready looked sharply at Palmer. The latter's bilious
expression had vanished.
"That's Copper!"
As one man, the crew rushed down the hallway and
turned the bend into the infirmary. Fuchs and Copper were
there, standing in front of the open storage refrigerator.
The interior was a disaster area. Broken glass and dried
blood caked the porcelain. Every bottle and container had
been opened, dumped, and then shattered.
Copper was gaping in disbelief at the destruction. His
normal composure was gone; his face was pale.
"Somebody got inside, got to the blood. Sabotaged it.
There isn't an ounce left that's usable."
"Oh my God," Nauls was muttering. He looked around at
his companions. "No dog could do something like this.
Opening a kennel latch, that was one thing, sure, but
breaking into a locked refrigerator, uh-uh. And that meant
that . . ."
Macready pushed his way through the horrified silence
and examined the open door. "How was it broken into?"
"That's just it," Copper told him slowly, "it wasn't.
Somebody opened it. Closed it up after they finished their
work so's it wouldn't show, and then locked it again. If it had
been broken into, I would have noticed it before now."
Sanders had backed away from the refrigerator as though
it were a live thing, until he'd come up against the far wall.
He kept his back against it, whispering in Spanish and trying
to keep space between himself and his nearest neighbor.
Something had to be done, and fast, Macready knew.
Maybe this was how it had started at the Norwegian camp.
The thing didn't even have to show itself. All it had to do was
let you know it was around. Complete paranoia would soon
take control of the human survivors and they'd reduce
themselves to a manageable level. He wondered if the thing
had a sense of irony, of humor, and decided it probably did
not.
Talk, he told himself. Say something, say anything, but
stay calm. Keep their minds working and their thoughts off
shadowy suspicions.
He stepped forward. "Well, let's break this down logically.
Who's got access to the lock? The refrigerator's."
Copper thought a moment. "I guess I'm the only one with
authorization, outside of Garry."
The station manager nodded his agreement. "And I've got
the only key. That's regulations." He indicated the
refrigerator. "Drugs kept in there, too."
Eyes began to shift around to focus on the station
manager, but no one voiced what their owners were thinking
. . . yet.
"Would that serum test really have worked?" Macready
asked the doctor.
"I think so. Wouldn't have suggested it if I didn't. I wasn't
using it as a ploy to try and force this thing to reveal itself, if
that's what you're driving at."
"Somebody else sure as hell thought it would work."
Norris glared at his companions as he gestured at the
ravaged refrigerator. "If we needed any proof that it
would've worked, we've got it now."
Macready was still thinking "Who else could have used
that key, chief?"
"Ahh . . . no one I can think of, offhand," Garry replied
slowly. "Like I said, the doc and I are the only ones
authorized to unlock that cold storage unit. I give the key to
Copper when he needs something inside. It's safer that way."
"I'm beginning to wonder." The pilot glanced at Copper.
"Could anyone have gotten it away from you, Doc?"
"I don't see how. When I'm finished with it I return it to
Garry right away." He smiled slightly. "I'm always afraid I'll
lose it or put it down someplace and forget what I did with it.
Since it's the only key, I'm especially careful to see that
Garry gets it back."
"When was the last time you used it?"
Copper shuffled his feet, and stared at the floor as he
tried to remember. "A day or so ago . . . I guess."
Garry began to notice the inquiring, suspicious eyes
turned on him. "I suppose . . . it's possible someone might
have lifted it from me."
"That key ring of yours is always hooked to your belt,"
Childs pointed out accusingly. "Now, how could somebody
get to it without you knowing?"
The station manager sounded uncharacteristically
flustered. "I suppose that when I was asleep . . . look, I
haven't been near that refrigerator."
No one said anything. They continued to stare at the
outpost's chief administrator. Sanders edged off into a
corner, perspiring heavily.
"Copper's the only one who has any business with it,"
Garry added.
The men's attention momentarily shifted to the doctor.
"Now wait a second, Garry. You've been in the infirmary on
several occasions."
Fuchs was trying to be rational amid a rising tide of
panic. "I think we can eliminate the doc from suspicion. He's
the one who thought of the test."
"Maybe the thing would propose it just so it could reveal
this," Norris pointed toward the refrigerator, "and turn
suspicion away from itself." He was looking hard at Copper.
 Macready sounded doubtful. "Unnecessary. Better not to
propose the test at all. Fuchs is right. Would you have
thought of it?"
The younger man shook his head. "Human physiology
isn't my field."
"So that leaves the doc out. For now, anyway. Because he
brought the whole business up."
"So what?" Childs looked like he wanted to torch
something. "Is that supposed to leave him in the clear?
Bullshit! Maybe Norris is right. Maybe this thing's always
going to be two mental steps ahead of us. It'll keep us going
around and around in circles until some time late at night it
decides to end it all by—"
An inarticulate moan rose from the back of the room. The
men turned in time to see Sanders's back disappearing into
the hallway. Everyone took off after him.
"Hey, Sanders," Garry shouted after the fleeing radio
operator, "don't panic! We have to stay together, get this
figured out. It wants us separated!"
Sanders didn't stop or slow down. Just then he wasn't
thinking too straight. He wished fervently he was back home
in Los Angeles, back at the university. Anywhere but where
he was, trapped at the bottom of the world with a thing that
could be your best friend.
He sped along the corridors, opening doors ahead and
slamming them in his wake. Shouts rose from behind.
They were coming for him. The things. Maybe they'd all
been taken over by now and they'd just been toying with
him. Certimento, that was it! They'd been feasting on his
fear, toying with him until the right moment came.
Then they'd all gather around, all of them, trapping him
helplessly in their midst, and as he watched they would
change. Thin white ropes would come out of them, like the
dog, and they'd enter his hapless body while the men who
weren't men any more would smile down at him, smile while
something slipped into him and pushed Sanders aside, took
over his brain and body cell by cell by cell by—
He was screaming as he burst into the little storage room.
The glass case hanging on the near wall contained the guns
that were allocated to the station. They'd been provided in
case the men felt like doing some recreational shooting or
the biologists needed to bring down a specimen.
Among the casually arrayed weapons were the three
shotguns Macready, Bennings, and Childs had taken with
them on their recent dog hunt. Now they were back in their
slots, cleaned and ready for use next summer. Only summer
was six long, black months away and Sanders needed a gun
now.
He tried the case handle, found it locked. The clamor of
approaching voices was louder now, accompanied by the
pounding of many feet. Sanders looked wildly around the
room, and pounced on the heavy duty stapler on the desk.
The glass cracked with the third blow, shattered at the
fourth. He fumbled inside the case and extricated one of the
shotguns, then a large box of shells.
Frantically he fought to load the single-barreled weapon.
It was a twelve-gauge, big-mouthed and lethal. Powerful
enough to stop even a thing at close range. His shaking
hand yanked back the lid on the box and turned it over.
Shells fell into his palm, and bounced all over the floor.
Somehow he jammed one after another of the plastic-tipped
bullets into the gun.
The men arrived. Garry pulled out his omnipresent
Magnum and pointed it squarely at the radio operator.
"Sanders! Put that down. Right . . . now."
Sanders looked up at him, his eyes wide. He was
trembling violently. A shell fell from his fingers, bounced on
the floor and rolled over to Garry's feet.
"No. I won't."
"I'll put this right through your head." The station
manager spoke slowly so that the radio operator would be
sure to understand. The tip of the Magnum never wavered.
No one doubted Garry's sincerity.
Sanders' gaze traveled past the station manager to the
men grouped behind him in the corridor.
"You guys going to let him give orders? I mean, he could
be one of those things. What about the refrigerator lock?" He
looked fearfully back at Garry. "How about it, man? How do
you explain that away?"
A few heads turned Garry's way, the shotgun
momentarily forgotten. None of them were oblivious to the
fact that Sanders just might be right.
"Put the gun away," the station manager said again. His
tone was soothing. "Just put the gun away, then we'll talk
about the refrigerator. But we can't talk as friends if we're all
pointing guns at each other, can we? Please put it away,
Sanders. I know how you're feeling. We're all confused. But
we're also all in this together."
Not all of us, Macready corrected him silently. One of us is
feeling very different.
Sanders considered Garry's plea, the motionless Magnum
pointed at his head, and the men waiting behind the station
manager. He had to do something.
Abruptly he threw the remaining shells he held at the
broken gun case. The men flinched instinctively, but none of
the shells went off. Then the radio operator turned and
leaned the gun carefully against the wall. He stood there a
moment longer, his facial muscles working, and finally burst
into tears. Nauls skated over and tried to comfort him.
As the others watched Garry slowly lowered the pistol,
put it back in its holster. He inhaled deeply and turned to
confront them. His tone was intense.
"I don't know about Copper. But I didn't go near that
refrigerator. As you all damn well know, I don't use anything
stronger than aspirin."
"But the doc said he'd seen you in the infirmary several
times before," Childs reminded him.
 Garry turned slightly belligerent as he replied to the big
mechanic. "Sure I've been in there. I've also been out in the
maintenance shed, even though I'm not a mechanic. I've
been in the telecommunications room, though I don't work
alongside Sanders. I've been in every corridor and room on
this base. So have most of you.
"So what? That doesn't prove a damn thing." No one saw
fit to contradict him. "But I guess you'll all rest easier if
someone else is in charge for a while." He pulled the gun
from the holster and sized up the circle of anxious faces
surrounding him. He finally settled on one.
"Can't see anyone objecting to you, Norris."
"Sorry, chief. I respectfully decline." He grinned ruefully
and patted his chest. "Don't think I'd be up to it. Haven't
been feeling too good lately. You guys know about my heart
condition. I think you ought to appoint someone able to take
a lot of strain, should the need arise."
Childs reached for the gun. "I'll take it . . ."
Macready beat him to it. "No offense, Childs, but Norris's
point about stability is well taken. Maybe it should be
someone a bit more even-tempered."
Childs glared at him, but didn't argue.
Macready inspected his companions. "Any objections?"
Fuchs didn't meet his eyes. Macready prodded him. "Well,
you got something to say, say it. This ain't the time to spare
anybody's feelings."
Fuchs spoke hesitantly. "First Childs reached for the gun,
then you, Mac. Both of you have been out, away from camp.
And you had contact with this thing. So did Bennings. Only,
Bennings didn't come back." He looked up, stared at the
pilot; "How do we know the thing didn't get to both of you?"
"You don't. Nobody knows much of anything right now.
Nobody will, until we can find a way to test for this things's
presence . . . somehow." He held the gun loosely.
"I'm not gonna insist, though. Anybody got any better
suggestions? I'm open."
 Uncertain eyes roved through the group, each of them
suspicious of his neighbor. Everyone came under scrutiny.
There was no such thing as a close friend anymore.
"I guess . . . you're as safe as anyone," Fuchs finally
admitted. He ventured a conciliatory smile. "I'm sorry, Mac. I
had to say it."
"No hard feelings. I know how you feel."
"Okay, what now?" Norris asked him.
Macready considered. "For one thing we stick together.
Let's get back to the rec room and try and talk it out.
Everybody. And let's try and keep our emotions under
control. Because when we don't—" he glanced meaningfully
at the still sobbing Sanders—"that's when we play right into
this thing's hands."
Rampant fear of one's friends and neighbors did not
make for a very genial atmosphere as they filed back into
the recreation room and gathered around the center table.
But at least no one was pointing a shotgun or Magnum at
someone else.
"From what we know," Macready was declaiming, "this
thing likes to go one-on-one. Remember what Blair said
about it taking an hour to complete a proper takeover? It
likes to get you alone so it can work on you in private."
"Remember what happened to Bennings," Childs
reminded the pilot. "He was changing while we watched,
and it took minutes, not an hour."
"Yeah, but it was a hurried job and the thing never did
break free of him," Macready countered. "It can make a mess
in a few minutes, but to do it right takes longer." Childs
considered that, nodded slowly in agreement.
"So we stick together," Macready continued, "as much as
possible until we're sure it's safe. Nobody goes anywhere to
do anything up to and including daily station maintenance
unless he's accompanied by someone else. We do
everything in twos and threes whenever possible. If we do
have to split up, it should be for only a short time and the
guys involved should at least stay within sight and earshot
of each other."
Childs pointed to a corner where Garry, Clark, and the
doctor had been isolated. "I'll go along with that, Mac. But
what do we do about those three?"
"We got morphine, don't we?" Macready glanced over at
Fuchs.
"Again, that's not my department, but I think we do, yes."
"Okay. We keep them loaded. Stash them here in the rec
room with the lights on round the clock and watch 'em
close."
Palmer was suddenly alert. "Morphine?" He let his upper
teeth hang over his lower lip and bugged his eyes. "You
know, I was pretty close to that dog, too."
Macready and the rest ignored him.
"We should sleep in shifts," Norris suggested.
"Good idea," agreed the pilot. "Half of us awake at all
times. It shouldn't be too hard. It's nighttime outside twenty-
four hours a day now anyway. That should keep anybody
from crawling into anybody else's bed. Or into anybody."
Thanks to Nauls's reassuring chatter, Sanders had
quieted down considerably. "How we going to try and find
out who's . . . you know. Who's who?"
"That's the big question." Macready looked over at Fuchs.
"You're our remaining link with biology. Can you think of any
other tests we could try? Maybe something this thing
wouldn't have thought of first, like it did with the serum
business?"
Fuchs mulled it over. "I'll give it a try. I could sure use
Copper's help, though."
"You can eighty-six that thought right now, man," said
Childs sharply. "At least until we figure out who got to that
refrigerator." Copper threw his accuser a hurt look.
"Also," Macready went on, "when this thing turns into
itself—into its natural form—it turns slowly at first. It takes a
while for the metamer . . . matamor . . ."
 "Metamorphosis," Fuchs said.
"Thanks. Yeah, when it goes through that process it takes
it a while to finish." He looked over at Childs. "Remember
when it was trying to become itself and take Bennings at the
same time?"
Childs found the constant reminder of the fight in the
canyon discomfiting. "Yeah, I remember. It was twisting and
jumping all over the place."
"Trying to get back into its own shape," Macready said,
nodding. "Which looked to be a damn sight bigger than any
human. That ties in with what Blair had to say about the
thing's cell structure being flexible, being able to stretch or
compact. I've got a hunch from what Childs and I saw that
this thing in its natural form is a helluva lot bigger than any
dog or man.
"But it takes time to change, just like it does to take
someone over. While it's still in the process of reverting, I
think we can handle it. Like I said, Childs and I already did."
"Bennings didn't," murmured Norris.
"It surprised us," Macready argued. "We weren't familiar
with the surroundings and we didn't expect any kind of
radical transformations." He slapped the table. "This is our
camp. It won't be so easy to surprise us here.
"But if it ever reached full maturity and full power . . .
based on what I saw of that Norwegian outpost . . . metal
ripped apart, beams busted in half . . . well, I just don't know.
"If Blair's right and it needs an hour to take something
else over, it probably needs close to that to achieve
maturity. So no matter what anybody's doing, we all return
to this room for a check every twenty minutes. Anybody
gone longer than that, we kill 'em."
"Kind of an extreme reaction, isn't it?" said Norris.
Macready stared back at him, hard. "There's no reason for
anybody who keeps his head to miss that deadline." Even
Sanders nodded in agreement, having recovered his
equilibrium.
 "Better nobody stay in the can too long," he managed to
quip. "That'd be a hell of a place to die." There were a few
weak laughs.
"Okay then." Macready turned to leave. "We've still got
things to do. This outpost ain't going to run itself. No reason
why we shouldn't get at it until Fuchs figures out another
test . . ."
 Palmer worked painfully at the engine of the short-haul
helicopter. Occasionally he'd glance nervously over his
shoulder for movement that went against the wind. Sanders
and Macready were dim, distant shapes moving about the
trash dump.
He turned back to his work, frowned at the engine and
then the pile of parts nearby.
"Well, damn. Where's that magneto? Can't find a thing
around here anymore."
Copper, Clark, and Garry sat moodily next to one another
on the large rec room couch. Norris had the doctor's bag
open on the card table and was awkwardly trying to prepare
three injections. He was new at the business, hadn't done
any first aid since the Army, and that was a long time ago.
Fuchs couldn't help. The assistant biologist was in the
lab, trying to think of a new test they could try on each
other. That took priority. Not that he would have been of
much use. He was used to squirting things out of hypos into
cultures and slides, not veins. Norris would have to manage
by himself.
Copper shifted his backside on the cushions and smiled
pleasantly. "I'll do it, if you like," he told the geophysicist.
"You're liable to break the needle in my arm, or miss the
vein."
Childs gestured toward him with the torch. "Never you
mind, Doc. It'll be all right. He's doing a real fine job." He
smiled encouragingly at Norris.
"I'm not sure . . ." the older man began hesitantly.
"Just do your best, man," the, mechanic advised him.
"You'll manage." He smiled thinly at the three on the couch.
Copper glared at him.
 The wind whistled around Macready, trying to pry under
the warm, insulated rim of his parka hood. The only light
came from the flashlights he and Sanders carried. The faint
glow of the compound's exterior lamps barely reached the
trash dump. They could hear Palmer flailing energetically at
the nearby helicopters.
He turned over a heap of damp cardboard, kicked it
aside. "Look for shoes, too," he told his companion. "And
burned cloth. Any clothing that's more than just worn out."
Having finally succeeded in performing the injections,
with a minimum of discomfort to the recipients, Norris had
moved into the telecommunications room. He knew more
about electronics than medicine and was glad of the
opportunity to work on something that wouldn't complain if
he made a mistake.
He disconnected the still useless headset and rubbed at
his chest. Occasionally Childs would give him a shout and
he'd answer back.
He took the small plastic bottle from his shirt pocket and
popped a couple of the tiny white pills. The pain in his chest
went away. He went back to work on the radio.
Nauls was skating through the labyrinth of corridors,
checking out the individual waste bins as well as shelves,
lockers, and anyplace else something might have hidden
damaging evidence. He checked regularly with Childs or
Fuchs.
Macready passed him, coming in from outside. The cook
gave him a bored glance.
"That thing's too smart to be throwing away any more of
its clothes where we can find 'em, Macready."
"Just keep looking."
"Yeah. What fun."
"Want to trade places? I'll search in here for a while and
you can go outside and freeze with the garbage."
"Thanks, but I've got cooking to keep an eye on." He
skated off toward the kitchen.
 Fuchs sat at the lab desk, pouring over an open book.
Several other volumes lay open nearby, stacked like
steamed clams. The soft light from the reading lamp
illuminated the open pages but not his thoughts, which were
filled with confusion and worry.
Macready poked his head into the lab.
"How's it going, Fuchs?"
"Nothing yet." He looked up from the book. "I had one
thought, though. If the dogs changed because something
they swallowed took control of them from the inside out,
we'd better see to it that everyone prepares his own food
and that we eat out of cans. Not that I don't trust Nauls, but
anyone could get to a pot of stew."
"Gotcha. Good idea, Fuchs. Keep at it." He nodded toward
the open tomes on the desk. "I don't know how much longer
the guys are going to hold together."
"Right." The pilot disappeared and Fuchs turned tiredly
back to his work.
The siren howled above the wind outside the compound,
signaling the end of a twenty-minute work period. Sanders
extricated himself from the trash dump. At least it didn't
smell. It was too cold for that.
Palmer joined him and they headed for the entrance
together. He was carrying a large piece of engine.
Sanders eyed the machinery curiously. "What's that for,
man? You going to work on it inside?"
"No. Just the opposite," Palmer told him. He grunted,
trying to shift the heavy metal higher in his arms. "It's
Macready's idea. So nobody goes for any unauthorized
jaunts."
"Oh." The radio operator nodded sagely.
Macready was waiting for them. He held the door open as
the two men staggered into the corridor flanking the main
supply rooms. Childs was working nearby, selecting a new
tip for the big torch.
 Palmer staggered over to the mechanic and dumped the
heavy section of engine. "Whew! Heavy mother. Hey, Childs?
Where's that magneto from chopper one?"
Childs looked up from his searching, inspecting the new
tip he'd chosen. "Ain't it out there?" He closed the storage
bin and started up the corridor.
Palmer yelled after him. "No, it ain't out there, wise-ass.
Would I be asking if it were?"
A hand touched his shoulder. "Move it, Palmer, or we're
going to be late," Macready reminded him.
Norris arrived and dumped radio parts next to the section
of engine. Macready locked the door and they all hurried
after the mechanic.
"I heard you and Childs talking," Macready said to Palmer.
"Something missing?"
"Ahhh . . . skip it. Not important." He pushed back the
hood of his parka, began unsnapping the coat. "I'm starving.
What's for supper?"
"Whatever you feel like."
Palmer frowned at him. "I don't like the sound of that."
"You probably won't think much of the taste, either. It's
our new dining policy. Serve yourself and save."
"Save what?"
"Yourself. Canned food only until Fuchs can come up with
a foolproof test for thingism. Unless you want to chance
ending up like the dogs."
"Oh, yeah, I get it," Palmer replied. But the prospect of
living off canned food instead of Nauls's hearty meals for an
unknown period of time was just one more development that
added to the general misery infecting the outpost.
"Start taking those snowmobiles apart next, okay?"
Macready instructed him. They turned a bend in the
corridor, leaving the supply room far behind.
"I'm sorry, guys." Nauls skated over to the crowded stove
where cans of various colors and sizes were heating.
"Macready's orders."
 "That's all right, Nauls," Fuchs assured him. "It's for
everyone's own good."
"Yeah, I know that. I just hate to see everybody having to
down that canned slop instead of my cooking."
Childs made an elaborate display of masticating a
spoonful of his own meal, then said thoughtfully, "Actually, I
hadn't noticed much difference." He ducked the spoon the
cook heaved at him, laughing good-naturedly.
Nauls still had some food to prepare. He checked the tray
with more than usual care, since it was all he had to do now
other than making certain no one broke the stove or cut
himself on a can opener.
Besides which he felt a little guilty about Blair. Most of
them were starting to. The biologist might've gone crazy,
but even though his head was in the wrong place, his heart
wasn't.
Meat loaf, potatoes, English peas, bread and butter . . . all
present and accounted for. The others toyed with their cans
and watched enviously as he slipped foil over the tray and
then slid it into an insulated polyethylene container. Nauls
donned his outside gear and skated toward the nearest exit.
He paused there to remove his wheels, then opened the door
and put his head into the wind.
It was his second tour in Antarctica, but men who'd done
three times that assured him you never got used to the polar
winter. It was one thing to go to bed while it was still bright
and sunshiny outside, in the summertime. That was easy to
cope with. But he didn't like waking up to total darkness. It
made you think the world had died.
As he neared the toolshed he thought he could make out
a new sound over the wind: a distant pounding.
"Take it easy, man," he muttered toward the shed. The
need to go outside had killed whatever compassion he'd
been feeling for Blair. It was cold.
"I got your goodies. Old Nauls wouldn't forget you. Man,
you don't know how good you got it, everybody else
slopping out of cans. Got your own private chef."
He halted outside the door. The pounding from inside was
very loud. He paused uncertainly, then put the tray down
and peeked through the tiny window set in the door.
Blair was making the noise, all right, but with a hammer
instead of his fists. The hammer was a small, light-duty
model. It wasn't heavy enough to break through the thick
boards the cook and Macready had installed over the
windows.
But Blair wasn't trying to break out. He was nailing new
boards over the door from the inside, and though his
medical experience was somewhat more than limited, Nauls
could tell by the expression on the biologist's face that he
was far from cured.
"Hey," he shouted, "what are you doing, man?"
"Nobody's getting in here!" Blair yelled hysterically.
"Nobody. You can tell them all that."
Nauls shook his head dolefully and raised the hinged slat
that had been cut in the base. He pushed the covered tray
through the opening.
"Well, who the hell you think would want to get in there
with you? Not me, man."
The tray came shooting back out. It slid across the icy
walkway and turned over. Polyethylene and foil split and
food came flying out, some of it staining Nauls's coat.
"Now why'd you go and—"
"And I don't want any more food with sedatives in it!"
Blair screamed. "I know what you're up to. Don't think I
don't. You're all so clever. And if anyone tries to get in here .
. . I've got rope. I'll hang myself before it gets to me."
"Yeah? You promise?" Nauls turned and picked up the
rejected tray. He started back toward the compound,
grumbling under his breath.
Time passed, but not slowly. You could feel the tension,
though everyone did his best to conceal it from his neighbor.
Everyday tasks provided welcome relief. They took one's
mind off the horror that might still be lingering over the
camp. Jokes were forced, as was the laughter that greeted
them.
Outwardly, everything seemed normal, but suspicion and
paranoia colored every word, every movement. Suspicion,
paranoia, and a desperate fear.
Palmer was working on the second snowmobile. He'd
removed all the spark plugs from both, dismantled the
carburetors, removed and concealed the gas filters.
Now he was taking the engines off their mountings. They
would go into the locked storage room, along with the vital
components of the helicopters and the tractor. The mounting
bolts and screws would be hidden elsewhere.
Macready was taking no chances. He was at work in the
balloon tower with a kitchen knife, methodically slashing
each of the huge, uninflated weather balloons into
uninflatable strips. There was no telling how long they might
have to remain isolated before Fuchs could come up with a
new test.
It was unlikely, but a half-frozen gull or man-o-war bird
just might drop into camp. It would better to take no
chances. Birds could not be pursued.
He finished the last of the balloons, then lingered over
the tanks of hydrogen stored nearby before deciding there
was no need to empty them. There was nothing in camp
their resident thing could surreptitiously combine to make a
suitable envelope out of.
The stereo in the kitchen wailed, its vibrant,
undisciplined music easing the tension with the unconcern
of a world that seemed a million miles away. Nauls hummed
as he removed the dishes from the washer and stacked them
neatly on their proper shelf.
Childs sighed. One hand scratched at an ear. The other
flipped the pages of a thick magazine. The industrial torch,
its new tip gleaming, lay close at hand.
 Clark, Copper, and the station manager dozed on the
couch nearby. The effects of the morphine would be wearing
off soon. Norris would be around to redose the trio, Childs
knew.
Clark stirred, rose and mumbled thickly at the guard.
"Gotta go to the can, Childs."
Making a face the mechanic put down the magazine. He
half-carried the dog handler to the far end of the room and
opened the door for him.
"Be quick about it." Clark staggered into the head. A few
seconds passed and the lights began to flicker. Childs looked
around worriedly.
They went out completely for a second, then came back
on. "Oh no," the mechanic muttered. "No . . . not now, man."
When they winked out the second time it was for good.
Along with the light something else had vanished: a
mechanical breathing so soft and steady you quickly learned
to ignore it. The purr of the generator.
"Childs!" That was Nauls, shouting from the kitchen.
"That a breaker?"
"No," Childs told him. "Breaker would have gone out
instantly. There wouldn't have been any flicker. Listen, don't
you hear it?"
"Hear what, man?" came the reply. "I don't hear
anything."
"That's what I mean. The generator's gone. You got the
controls for the auxiliary there in the hall next to you.
They're opposite the door from the kitchen. Get to 'em." He
stumbled around in the darkness, cursing as he bumped into
the card table. "Where's that damn flashlight?" Something
fell from the table and hit the floor. Magazine, probably.
"You fellas okay over there?"
A giggle came from the couch, edgy and fearful.
"Cut that out, Copper." Childs hesitated. The flashlight
should be in the corner, on a shelf. He started feeling his
way along the wall. "Nauls, what's taking you so long? It's
straight out the door."
"I know," came the nervous reply. "I found it. I'm working
on it right now, but nothing's happening!"
"That's impossible, man." He reached the shelf and felt
among the books and games. No flashlight.
Turning back to the center of the room he shuffled
carefully back to the card table. "Okay, Clark. Out of the
john right now."
"It's shorted out or something!" Nauls was yelling at him
from down the corridor.
Childs ignored the cook's lament. He wanted a response
from the bathroom. "Clark. You hear me, Clark? You come on
out of there! Now."
When there was still no reply forthcoming, Childs felt
around the table until he located the torch. It flared to life
with gratifying speed. Blue fire filled the recreation room
with ghostly but adequate illumination.
He started toward the john, but something half seen
made him pause and turn the torch toward the couch.
"Where . . . where's Garry?" The station manager had
disappeared. Copper was staring numbly at the empty
cushion next to him. He and Childs were now alone.
"Well, shit." The mechanic groped for the portable siren
and switched it on, thankful for the batteries that powered
it.
Palmer looked up from the now invisible snowmobile he'd
nearly finished dismantling. Macready and Sanders pushed
a path out of the trash dump and exchanged a glance with
the assistant pilot. Soon all three of them were loping toward
the nearest entrance, making their way by flashlight
through the long night.
Childs twisted and spun at every little imagined noise,
trying to keep the torch between himself and the darkness.
"Where are you, Garry? Don't you move an inch, Copper."
The doctor giggled again, loudly. It did not improve the
mechanic's already shaky state of mind.
"Nauls, bring me a goddamn flashlight!"
The cook abandoned the useless control box and
returned to the kitchen, feeling along his familiar cabinets
until he reached a particular drawer. His hands moved
among the contents, picking up spoons and spatulas and
ladles, everything except what he was searching for.
"Somebody's taken mine. I can't find it!"
"Clark! "Childs turned the torch toward the bathroom.
"You coming out of there or you want me to come in after
you?"
Macready, Sanders, and Palmer stumbled into the
hallway, bumping into each other as they fought to get their
bearings in the unexpectedly dark corridor. Macready closed
the door behind them. Their flashlights provided the only
illumination.
"What's happened?" Macready called out. When the
outside lights had gone he'd expected some trouble inside,
but not this utter, complete blackness. "Anybody know what
happened?"
"Macready . . . that you?" It was Norris.
"Yeah! Palmer and Sanders are with me. What the hell's
going on?"
"I think it's the generator," the geophysicist replied.
"There's no power to anything, the lights included."
"What about the backup?"
"Beats me. All I know is everything's out."
Macready turned to his assistant. "All right, Palmer, let's
get down there."
"Macready!"
"That you, Childs?"
"Yeah. I'm still in the rec room."
Macready's thoughts were racing. "You okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine, man. But Garry's missing."
 "Oh shit." The pilot thought a moment. They had other
priorities right now. "Well . . . hang on!"
"Gee, thanks." The mechanic's voice was cheerless as it
floated down the corridor. "What about power?"
"Palmer and I are getting on it." He started running up
the corridor.
The flashlight beam seemed weak and on the verge of
failing as the two men stumbled down the short flight of
stairs leading to the generator room. At the bottom
Macready hesitated, turned and searched the darkness with
the light.
"Sanders. Where's Sanders?"
They examined the stairway together, then the floor and
walls of the generator room. Sanders was gone.
Palmer took a step back the way they'd come and asked
unenthusiastically, "Want me to go look for him?"
"No. Not now," Macready said impatiently. "We've got to
get this mother going first, then we can go looking for
people."
They approached the silent mass of metal. It squatted
like an armored dinosaur in the middle of the floor. The smell
of diesel, thick and noxious, was everywhere. But it was
fading rapidly.
Palmer used the light, inspecting components. The beam
lingered on an open space near the base.
"The fuel pump's gone." Panic cracked his voice. "You've
got to get up to Supply and find another unit, Mac. If we
don't get this thing started soon it'll freeze up on us and
we'll never get it going."
"What about the auxiliary?"
"I know what's been done to this. I don't know about the
other."
"You sure about the pump? That's all that's missing?"
The flashlight beam retraced its path across the
generator. "I think so. I don't see anything else. This is really
Childs's department."
 "Childs is busy," Macready reminded his assistant. "Hang
on. I'll be back as fast as I can."
"You want my light?"
Macready glanced at his own feeble beam. "No, you keep
it. Make sure nothing else has been jimmied." He turned and
rushed up the stairs, heedless of tripping in the near dark.
Palmer just waited. It occured to him that he was all alone
in the lowest, most isolated area of the compound.
Hell, get your mind on something else, he told himself.
Holding the flashlight tightly in one hand, he lay down on
his back and edged under the generator. At least he could
make sure everything else was ready to go.
Of course there was always the chance Macready might
not return for a while. He might get distracted. Or something
might distract him. Palmer furiously began tightening
screws, regardless of whether or not they were loose.
Childs paced the rec room floor, swatting his sides to
keep warm. The temperature was falling rapidly, the
Antarctic night leaching the heat from the compound
despite the multiple layers of insulation designed to keep it
at bay. The torch lay on the card table, adding a little heat,
its blue glow barely reaching to the corners of the room.
Copper sat by himself on the couch.
At least he'd stopped that infernal giggling, Childs mused
gratefully.
Macready charged out of the supply room, juggling his
flashlight and a new solid pump unit, and promptly
careened off another body.
"Who . . . who's that? Who goes there?"
There was no reply. The dim silhouette hurried off down
the hallway.
"Sanders? That you? You flipped out again, man? It's okay
. . . it's me, Macready. Hey, who . . ."
A dim voice drifted up from the other direction. "Mac?"
Palmer sounded anxious. "That you, Mac? Where the hell is
that pump?"
 "Coming!" He threw a last look down the hallway, but saw
only darkness. Then he was running for the generator room,
So intent was he on protecting the fuel pump that he
nearly fell in his haste to get down the few stairs. Palmer's
light beckoned from beneath the generator. Macready
dropped to his knees and put the unit close to the other
pilot. Palmer backed out and joined him in tearing at the
box.
"This going to do it?" Macready asked him. Palmer was
studying the exposed unit.
"It's not the same."
"Hell." Macready started to rise. "I'll go look again."
"No, no," Palmer grabbed his arm and held him back. "I
mean, it's made by a different manufacturer than the
missing unit. It'll fit."
Macready breathed a sigh of relief. "Shit, Palmer, don't do
that to me."
"Hold the light for me, will you?" Palmer reached in and
grabbed his own flashlight and handed it to Macready. Then
he wormed his way back underneath.
"A little higher, Mac." Macready raised the twin beams.
Palmer's hands came into view. Their breath was already
starting to freeze as the temperature continued to fall.
He held the lights as steady as he could while Palmer
worked with increasingly clumsy, numb fingers.
"Somebody definitely messed with it." A hose clamp was
slipped into place, tightened.
"We going to make it?"
"Hope so. Another fifteen minutes." Palmer was beginning
to sound more confident. "Wonder what happened to the
auxiliary. What I don't get is—"
He was interrupted by a violent, thunderous screeching.
Macready froze. He'd heard that sound twice before now.
Once on the tape salvaged from the Norwegian camp, and
once far out on the ice. He thought of Bennings as his heart
began to hammer against his ribs . . .
 Macready had never been so glad to see anything
happen in his life as he was to see the lights come back on.
Palmer crawled out from beneath the now humming
generator, wiping grease off on his pants.
"That should hold it for now, until Childs can get down
here and bolt it properly. Where to?"
"Rec room," Macready told him tersely. He was reluctant
to abandon the generator room, but had to content himself
with slapping a heavy padlock on the door as they exited.
The rec room was crowded by the time they arrived. The
congestion, the presence of human bodies, was comforting
after the long minutes spent alone with the generator.
Neighbor studied neighbor. Palmer, Nauls, and Sanders,
spread themselves out as far as possible, putting distance
between themselves and everyone else.
Norris and Childs were using nylon ropes to tie the
doctor, Clark, and Garry to the couch. Macready cursed
himself for not ordering it done sooner. Too late now. He
forced himself not to think of what might've happened if he
hadn't been able to come up with a replacement fuel pump
for the generator.
As Norris and Childs worked on the three prisoners
Macready fiddled with the little propane burners he'd
scavenged from Supply. They'd be dangerous to operate, but
he trusted the makeshift blowtorches more than any of the
guns.
"Where were the flashlights?" Sanders was asking him.
"What happened to all the flashlights, man?"
"Screw the flashlights," Macready growled at him. "Where
the hell were you?"
 "I . . . I panicked again, Mac. Just started running, trying
to get away. I'm sorry."
"De nada. Forget it." He rose, hefted one of the small
torches and looked over toward Palmer. "I think these'll
work. One of your better ideas."
"Thanks, Mac. But when I was getting the burner tips out
of Supply, I noticed, something else. It reminded me that I
couldn't find the magneto from chopper one. There's tons of
stuff missing. Cables, wire, microprocessor chips . . . all kinds
of shit. I didn't think anything of it until I remembered the
missing piece from the chopper."
"Now that's funny." Nauls stepped away from the wall.
"I've been missing stuff from the kitchen, too. I didn't say
anything about it because I didn't think it was important. I
mean, what the hell would anybody want with a food
processor?"
Macready surveyed the room, counting heads. "Anybody
see Fuchs? Or hear him?"
Nobody had. That was clear from their expressions as well
as the silence.
Childs was glaring at the station manager as he started to
tie the man's arms behind his back. "Where did you go when
the lights went out . . . chief?"
Garry was still woozy from the effects of the morphine.
"Was dark . . . find a light . . ."
"You lying bastard."
Garry fought the ropes, struggled to his feet. His words
were slurred. "I rather don't like your tone . . ." He reached
up a free hand and grabbed Childs by the collar.
"You sit back down." The mechanic whaled the station
manager with a powerful right hand. Garry managed to half
duck the blow, put his head into the bigger man's chest, and
threw his weight to one side. The two of them fell backwards
over the couch, almost taking Copper with them.
Macready and Norris dove in immediately, the pilot
grabbing Childs and Norris wrestling with the dazed but still
dangerous station manager.
"Easy, chief, that's enough. Take it easy!"
Somehow Macready managed to shove Childs to one side.
"Stop it, man! You hear me? This is just what it wants. Are
you fighting for it or against it?"
Childs was holding up a fist the size of a toaster; he
stared blankly at the pilot as he digested the latter's words.
The fist dropped slowly and the mechanic inhaled deeply.
When he spoke again he sounded embarrassed.
"Sorry, Mac. I wasn't thinking." But he continued to glare
at the station manager.
They were interrupted by a rumbling sound from above.
High wind battered at the roofing. Macready glanced at the
ceiling and released Childs.
"You all hear that?" He gazed around the room. "I checked
Bennings's charts. That storm's going to start ripping any
minute. So we don't have much time."
"Time for what?" Norris wanted to know.
Macready walked over to the card table and began
distributing the portable blowtorches. He shoved the first
one into Norris's stomach. "We've got to find Fuchs. When
we find him, we kill him."
Sanders looked shocked, "Why?"
"If he was still one of us he'd have come back here by
now. The lights have been on long enough. He hasn't . . . so
that means that he can't, or doesn't want to because he isn't
Fuchs anymore. If he has become one of those things, we've
got to get him before he changes into . . . into whatever it
can change into.
"Know what I think? I think it's tired of playing around. It
knows we've got it stuck here, so there's no reason for it to
keep lying low in hopes of stealing a copter or a snowmobile.
The only way it can survive now is by making sure we can't
finish it off. That means taking care of us. If it can't do that
as a man, it may try doing it as itself.
 "Remember, we've got less than an hour. I wish I knew
how much less." He looked to his right. "Nauls, you and
Childs and I'll check the outside shacks," He tossed torches
to Palmer and Sanders.
"You two search the compound. Stay together."
Palmer turned a wary gaze on the radio operator. "I ain't
going with Sanders."
Sanders's head snapped toward the backup pilot.
"Something wrong with me, man?"
Palmer ignored him, avoiding his eyes. "I ain't going with
him. I'll go with Childs."
"Well, fuck you, man."
"I ain't going with you!" Palmer's voice was on the edge
of hysteria.
"Well who says I want you going with me?" Childs put in
gruffly.
Macready stepped between them, angry and out of
patience. "Cut the bullshit! We haven't got the time for this.
How many times have I got to tell you guys that that's just
the way the thing wants us to act. Afraid of each other,
paranoid . . . we cut each other's throats and it'll sit back off
on the side and laugh itself silly."
Palmer looked like the kid who got caught with his hand
in the fudge. "Yeah, I know . . . but I still ain't going with
Sanders."
"Okay, okay." Macready made no effort to conceal his
disgust. "Sanders, you come with us. Norris, you stay here."
He turned to confront the men tied on the couch.
"Any of them move, you fry 'em. And if you hear
anything, anything at all that don't sound kosher, you let
loose with that siren. We all meet back here in twenty
minutes regardless." He lowered his voice meaningfully.
"And everybody watches everybody else. Don't get mad,
don't fight. Just watch." His eyes met those of close friends.
"All clear? Then let's move."
 The three men paused above the stairs. The wind blew
balefully around them. At least the outside lights were back
on, though flashlights were still necessary to illuminate the
wooden walkway.
"Okay, watch yourselves now," Macready warned them. A
powerful gust of wind gave impetus to his words. "This storm
will be on us any minute. I don't want to be stuck out here
when it hits.
"Sanders, you check the chemical storage shed." The
radio operator nodded and started off to his right across a
walkway buried beneath a half inch of slick snow. "Come on,
Nauls."
With the cook at his side, the pilot headed up the
walkway, leaning into the wind. He'd gone about a yard
before he slipped and nearly fell. The flashlight beam was
too weak to penetrate the ice-filled night air.
"Light up," he yelled at Nauls. The cook nodded. Each
man pulled a flare from his pocket, twisted the head to set it
alight. The intense glow brightened their path considerably.
They shuffled onward toward Blair's shed. The guide
ropes that flanked the walkway were all that kept them
headed in the right direction.
Childs opened the door carefully and peered into the
exposed room. Empty. He closed the door quietly, moved a
few yards down the hallway and opened the divider. The
corridor ahead was also deserted.
"What'd we ever do to these things, anyway?" a voice
said close behind him.
The mechanic whirled and glared down at Palmer. The
pilot had been mumbling to himself and had fallen a few
steps behind his companion.
The abruptness of Childs's move brought Palmer to a
startled halt. "What . . ."
"Don't walk behind me."
"Walk behind . . .?" Realization dawned. Normally Palmer
could let his mind drift langorously, but not now. This wasn't
the time for idle introspection. "Oh yeah . . . right."
He moved up until he was standing next to the opposite
wall, across from the mechanic. "This better?"
"Much better," Childs agreed. He moved past the divider
and into the next section of corridor. They continued that
way, neither man advancing ahead of or falling far behind
his partner. The jerky, awkward mutual lockstep did nothing
to lessen the tension between them.
The wind howled around the walls of the shack as Nauls
and Macready stopped in front of the door. The pilot glanced
around the left side of the building, then the right. None of
the boards covering the windows appeared to have been
disturbed.
"Let's keep it quiet," Nauls urged him. "Maybe the thing's
walking around out here, listening for—"
Macready shook his head and spoke brusquely. "It's got
more sense than that, and if it didn't you couldn't hear it
anyway. Not over this wind."
Nauls licked his lips, cursing himself when a crust of ice
immediately formed over them. He eyed the heavy boards
sealing the shed door. "So what do we do? Go on in?"
"Not unless we have to."
The little port set in the door was completely clouded
over. Macready squinted at it while Nauls danced behind
him, as much from nervousness as a desire to keep warm.
"See anything?"
Macready stared a moment longer, then finally shook his
head. "Too steamed up. The side windows should be clearer.
Come on."
Huddled close to the wall they moved around the left
side. The force of the wind abated slightly in the lee of the
shed.
The gap between two of the one-by-fours was also fogged
up, but not as badly as the glass in the doorway. Macready
peered inside.
 Blair was seated at the central table, barely visible in the
pale glow from the single weak bulb dangling overhead. He
was spooning food out of a can. A hangman's noose hung
stark and ready from one of the ceiling beams.
Macready put his mouth close to the glass, careful not to
let his lips come in contact with it. "Hey, Blair!"
The biologist jumped up, knocking over his chair and
spilling the can of food. His agitated expression belied his
seeming serenity. He searched wildly for the source of the
shout before his gaze came to rest on the side window.
"Mac, is that you?"
"Yeah. Me and Nauls. Take it easy, Blair." At this
reassurance the biologist appeared to relax slightly. He
walked over to the window and stared out at the pilot. His
eyes were red and lined, his hair unkempt and his clothing
disheveled. Macready thought he looked terrible.
"What d'you want, Mac?"
"Has Fuchs been out here?" Macready studied the other
man closely, trying to determine if he was likely to go on
another mad binge. He couldn't decide, even wished Copper
were present. But Copper was under suspicion.
"I've changed my mind," he told Macready. "I'd . . . I'd like
to come back inside. I don't want to stay out here anymore. I
hear funny things here."
I'll bet you do, thought Macready silently. The trouble is
you were hearing them before you were put out here.
"I asked if you'd seen Fuchs"
Blair made an effort and forced himself to consider
Macready's question "Fuchs? No, it's not Fuchs You must let
me back in. I won't harm anyone. I promise. You have all the
guns hidden away by now, I'm sure. I . . . I cant do any more
damage to anything"
"We'll see about it, Blair," Macready turned from the
window. "Got a couple of other things to check out first."
Nauls followed the pilot away from the shed.
 Blair's panicky voice followed them. "I promise! I'm much
better now. I'll be good. I'm all right. Don't leave me here.
Mac, don't leave me out here . . .!" The wind swallowed the
rest of his screams as Macready and Nauls moved a little
faster.
Norris was tired. The past couple of days had been rough.
He wasn't as young as most of the guys. Nor as healthy. He
kept his attention split between the sedated trio slumped on
the couch and the several entrances to the recreation room.
A dull ache throbbed in his chest. He rubbed his sternum
reflexively, wincing.
"I'm getting worried about you," Copper said thickly from
the couch. "You ought to have an EKG."
Norris self-consciously moved his hand away from his
chest and tried to sound unconcerned. "Let's not worry
about anything else just now."
The doctor yawned, not entirely the result of the
sedation. He was exhausted too. "Okay. After we get this
mess squared away, then. First thing."
Norris nodded agreeably. Something made a noise
outside the kitchen-end doorway and he jerked sharply in its
direction. It came again, faint and mechanical. Relay
switching over, he decided, relaxing again.
He looked back at the doctor and murmured, "After all
this mess . . ."
The wind outside was no longer merely strong, it had
turned decidedly vicious. Macready and Nauls had to use
the guide ropes to drag themselves along as they made
agonizingly slow progress toward the pilot's shed. The
gentle slope seemed like a sixty-degree climb.
They used both flashlight and flares now. The only sign of
life was provided by the dull orange glow of the exterior
lights impotently trying to penetrate the blowing snow.
A violent gust knocked Macready off his feet. He hung
onto the rope with both hands as his legs went out from
under him. His boots kicked at the snow. He was on his back,
half on the boardwalk and half lying on white oblivion. The
wind tore at him, trying to loosen his grip.
Nauls stopped as the pilot's flashlight and flare were
blown toward him. He dove for the light, gripping the rope
with his other hand, and managed to catch it before the
wind carried it out of sight.
Macready fought to get back on his feet. He was painfully
aware of his vulnerability, lying there on his back against
the slippery ice. Nauls was coming toward him, pulling
himself along the ropes. The pilot stared through battered
goggles at the younger man, the cook a surreal vision in
snow-caked parka and boots.
Then Nauls bent and handed over the flashlight. Trying
not to show his relief, Macready finally managed to pull
himself upright again.
"Thanks," he shouted above the wind. Nauls just nodded.
Together they resumed their hike toward the shed.
Normally the electric cables ran in neat, parallel lines
along the lower kitchen wall like so many silver pythons.
Now they were twisted and torn as if a small bomb had gone
off in their midst. Naked copper gleamed in the fluorescent
light.
Childs and Palmer were bent over them, examining the
damage.
"Auxiliary power line," Childs muttered angrily as he
poked at a particular cable. "That's why the backup never
came on, or the storage batteries either."
"Auxiliary cables," Palmer repeated. He leaned closer,
feeling betrayed. "Been cut by somebody."
"Cut, bullshit." Childs staightened and stared around the
deserted kitchen. He missed the familiar cooking smells and
the friendly cacophony of Nauls's stereo. "Been pulled
apart."
"Can we fix them?"
"Probably. Cut off the torn ends and put in clean splices. If
we get the time to." He turned to leave. "Come on. I said the
reserve batteries were probably all right. I want to make
sure." They headed for Supply.
In spite of the intensifying gale Macready and Nauls
managed to reach the top of the little hill. The shed provided
some protection from the growing storm. It was very dark.
The feeble light from the main compound was completely
obliterated by blowing snow.
Macready gestured and Nauls took up a ready stance on
the far side of the doorway. Reaching out with a gloved hand
the pilot flipped up the heavy latch. Then he took a deep
breath, shoved the door open and stepped inside, holding a
burning flare in front of him.
The first thing be did was trip the light switch just inside
the door, but no friendly light flared from the overhead
fixture. His gaze turned upward.
There was no light fixture. It was gone, along with most of
the roof. A few bent corners showed where the weighted
metal had been ripped back.
Aghast, he strode into his room. The wind was nearly as
strong inside as out front, now that the roof was gone.
Whether from the battering it had already taken from the
wind or from something else, the interior was a snow-swept
wreck.
He became aware that Nauls was shouting at him.
"Where's the roof?" The cook had been standing in the
doorway, staring. Now he walked in and turned in a slow
circle as he gazed skyward. "This storm do that?"
Macready shook his bead. Before they'd forced the door
he'd been frightened. Now he was getting angry.
"Possible but not likely," he told his companion. "Must
have weighed a ton and a half. I had it weighted against
hundred and fifty mile per hour winds. This little blow we're
having isn't anywhere near that strong."
They quietly inspected the ruin that had been Macready's
home away from home. The oversize chess set was a cracked
chunk of red and black plastic. It lay in a corner where it had
been thrown. A few of the pieces were visible above the
accumulated snow. They lay scattered all over the floor, a
pawn here, a broken king there.
Nauls kicked over a chair. As he did so something pale
and bloated bounded from beneath. He let out a half scream
and instinctively thrust his flare at it.
It caught the inflatable lady in the midsection. There was
a sharp report. Macready whirled at the gunshot-like report
while Nauls tripped and fell to the floor.
Caught by the gusting wind, the deflated latex soared
through the missing roof and disappeared into the night.
"Shit," Macready muttered, though whether because of
the loss of his companion or the false alarm Nauls couldn't
tell. The cook picked himself off the floor, brushing snow
from his rumpled parka.
"Goddamn women," he growled darkly. "Never could tell
what they were going to do."
It was cold in the side corridor. The generator was still
struggling to replace the heat lost during its temporary
shutdown.
Palmer stood by as Childs methodically undid the locks
sealing the plant room. It took time. The pilot didn't enjoy
waiting. He would greatly have preferred to wait back in the
rec room. But orders were orders. At least Mac hadn't forced
him to go with the jittery Sanders.
Eventually Childs turned the last dial and pulled the
heavy door aside. An unexpected gust of wind-driven snow
made the two surprised men step backward. Childs put his
head down and moved into it, wedging his body against the
doorjamb. Palmer hung close to him.
"My babies," the mechanic murmured, ignoring the cold
and the wind as he entered the modified storage closet.
The carefully machined skylight had been smashed.
Glass littered the floor, some still attached to the hand-
welded metal frames. The plants were dead. Their crowns
touched the floor, unable to stand straight under the weight
of accumulated ice.
Palmer's eyes widened as he took in first the gap in the
ceiling, then the forest of little green stalagmites.
"Somebody broke in," he whispered fearfully, "or out."
Childs didn't seem to hear. "Now who'd go and do a thing
like this?" A whole year's off-time cultivation, careful work
with the makeshift hydroponics, all shot to hell. He took a
step farther into the room.
Fear giving him necessary strength, Palmer reached in
and quickly yanked the mechanic back.
"Childs . . . no!"
The bigger man turned on him. "Let go of me, man,
before I . . ." He raised a threatening fist.
"No, no." Palmer let go of Childs's shirt and backed off,
pleading with him. "Don't stay in there." His gaze went to
the hole in the roof. "Don't get near the plants. They look
like they're frozen, but we can't be sure. The plants, they're
alive. Those things can imitate anything living, remember?
Any kind of organic construction."
Childs hesitated, reflexively moved his feet away from
the nearest growth. "What's it going to do, being a plant?
Grow up my leg?"
"I don't know, but we can't take any chances." Palmer
was carrying one of the portable torches Childs and
Macready had fashioned. Now he was checking the flow
valve as he pointed it toward the storage room.
"We got to burn 'em."
Childs gaze narrowed. "Now hold on just a minute, you
dumb—" He took a step toward the pilot.
Palmer dodged around him and activated the torch. A
narrow trail of fire sprayed past the mechanic. Ice melted
instantly and the plants beneath ignited, burning like thin
green candles. A pungent smoke drifted out into the hallway.
Childs gave Palmer a shove, and started dancing on the
flames in a frantic attempt to put the fire out.
 "You stupid, ignorant son of a—"
Palmer screamed. He'd started to turn away and his gaze
had fallen on the door blocking the corridor. The door had
swung lazily inward on its hinges, and now stood half closed.
Childs stopped stomping and stared past the pilot.
Staring at them from the back of the door was the frozen
body of Fuchs. An axe was imbedded in his chest, pinning
him to the wood. His eyes were still open. Together with the
expression on his face, they effectively mirrored whatever
had killed him.
Palmer was still screaming.
Norris heard it and jumped up from his seat in the
recreation room. Common sense fought with orders. He
looked at the couch. All three of his charges were still tightly
bound and sleeping off their drug-induced stupor.
Still, Macready had ordered him not to leave the room. He
settled for throwing the alarm.
Sanders had arrived in the storage area after finishing up
outside. Now he gazed in fascination at the corpse of the
young biologist as the siren continued to wail around them.
He put both hands on the axe and tried to wrench it out.
It wouldn't shift, let alone break free. The sharp head was
completely buried in Fuchs's chest and into the door
beyond.
The radio operator gave up. Stepping back he eyed
Childs's hulking frame and said pointedly, "Whoever put this
through him is one bad-ass and strong mother."
Childs moved closer, carefully inspecting the gruesome
sight. He made a fist and hammered on the handle of the
axe. It quivered slightly but didn't loosen. His tone was
subdued rather than offended when he turned to the radio
operator.
"No one's this strong, boy."
"I just got back in, heard the siren," Sanders told them.
"What about Macready and Nauls?" Palmer was trying
hard not to look at the corpse.
 "I think they're on their way in. They were just behind
me." He shrugged. "Quien sabe?"
Childs nodded thoughtfully. "All right. You both remember
the orders. That siren goes off, everybody beats it back to
the rec room. Wonder what set it off early?"
Palmer looked elsewhere. "Norris probably heard me
scream."
"Yeah, and he doesn't know why. Sensible reaction." He
clapped the pilot on the shoulder. "Hey, forget it, man. The
wonder is that we all aren't running around screaming our
damn heads off. Let's get back there. We can do some
checking on the way."
They made good time, opening and closing doors to
rooms or hallways as they ran, even rechecking those they'd
already inspected. But despite the momentary feeling of
closeness they'd shared back in the storage area, Palmer still
kept his distance from Childs, Childs kept clear of the pilot,
and Sanders stayed away from both of them.
"I don't understand," Palmer was saying as they ran, "why
didn't it take control of Fuchs? Isn't that it's number . . . to
get more recruits?"
Childs considered the question as he opened the door to
a closet. It contained several metal buckets full of sand and
a large fire extinguisher. That was all. He slammed it shut
and moved to the next door.
"I guess it didn't have enough time. The generator was
out what, thirty minutes? Twenty? Takes the bastards about
an hour or maybe more to take control of somebody,
remember?
"Maybe it got started on him and when the lights came
back on, it figured it had a choice between trying to hide out
and finish the job or splitting and preserving its cover. It
could hardly leave Fuchs standing around to tell the rest of
us who the mystery guest is. So it offed him."
Yeah, but why Fuchs?" Sanders wanted to know. The next
room held steel cannisters, cold air, and nothing alive. They
moved on. "Why not Macready, or you or me? The lights
were out all over camp. It could've jumped any one of us."
"Maybe none of the rest of us were as accessible, or alone
at the time," Childs suggested. "But I wouldn't bet that was
the reason." His thoughts were churning.
"Fuchs was supposed to come up with a new test for this
thing, remember? He must have been on to something.
These bastards got scared and got rid of him. Maybe they
didn't even bother to try taking him over. Probably were
more concerned about getting rid of him."
He stopped abruptly in the middle of the corridor, turning
to stare back down the passageway. "Hey, where's . . .?" He
glanced over at Sanders. "Didn't you say Nauls and
Macready were right behind you?"
Sanders also looked back the way they'd come, sweat
standing out on his brow. "Yeah. Yeah, they were. I saw 'em
just before I started down the stairs. I could see their lights
coming toward me."
"Well then, where the hell are they?" There was a pause
and then they were pounding back down the hallway,
shouting as they ran.
"Macready!" Palmer yelled.
Childs stopped long enough to bellow up a side corridor.
"Nauls! Macready!"
There was no reply. They continued searching and
shouting for several minutes, until finally they reached the
same outside door Sanders had used. The shouting ceased
and the three men exchanged nervous glances.
"What now?" Palmer whispered, staring at the door.
Childs reached for the latch, his hand hovering over it
while conflicting emotions tore through him. Then he pulled
his fingers back and spoke resolutely. "The siren's still
blowing. You know the orders. Back to the rec room."
Reluctantly, they abandoned the door and whatever
might lie just on the other side. As they retraced their steps
they continued to cry out to the two men who'd been
outside with Sanders.
The difference was that now they didn't expect an
answer.
The full-fledged storm rumbled outside, its persistent
howl penetrating even the tightly sealed, heavily insulated
recreation room. It was silent inside. The men looked at each
other, at the three dozing on the couch, anywhere but
toward the thick window that showed only darkness and an
occasional flurry of ice particles.
Childs paced back and forth, his fist regularly slamming
an open palm.
"Quit that," Palmer finally told him. "You're making me
nervous." Immediately the irony of his statement struck him
and he let out a short, uneasy laugh.
The mechanic spun on a heel and. strode up to Norris.
"How long they been outside now?"
"Can't be sure," Norris replied carefully. "I sort of half
glanced at my watch when they went out." He looked down
at the digital readout.
"Take a guess. We need to know."
The geophysicist considered. "Forty . . . forty-five
minutes."
"You sure it hasn't been longer? An hour, maybe?"
Norris squirmed. "I told you, I didn't pay much attention. I
guess it could be."
The silence was thick in the room as the men regarded
each other.
Childs started for the exit. "We'd better start closing off
the outside hatchways."
"You sure, Childs?" Palmer asked.
The mechanic stopped and stared across at Norris, who
nodded reluctant agreement. "What would Macready do,
Palmer?"
The pilot though of his friend and boss. "Yeah, you're
right," he said tightly. "I'll start on the north side, you and
Sanders take the south and east."
"Aren't you forgetting something?" Childs was giving him
a peculiar look.
"I don't . . . oh, yeah. We've got to work together. In that
case we'd better get moving." Childs was still staring at him.
"Hey, look, I just forgot for a minute, okay?"
"Try not to forget again, huh?" Childs started out of the
room.
They were nearly finished with the lockup when Norris's
faint shout reached them.
"All of you . . . come here!"
"Shit, now what?" Sanders grumbled. He threw the
interior bolt on the door they'd just reached and hurried
after his two companions.
When he entered the main hallway he saw Norris and the
others bunched up against one of the windows that flanked
the door.
"Hey, what's going on?" He pushed toward the window,
straining to see around Childs and the rest. Palmer glanced
back at him and pointed toward the foggy glass.
A figure was barely visible against the night. It was
staggering toward the compound, pulling itself forward by
using the guide ropes. Occasionally a particularly powerful
gust of wind forced it to halt. It waited until the blast had
subsided before stumbling forward again.
"Who is it?" Nauls whispered. "Nauls or Macready?"
"Can't tell for certain yet." Palmer didn't take his eyes
from the window. "But we'll know in a minute."
The silhouette came onward, growing larger if not more
distinct, until it disappeared. Then a steady pounding
sounded from the other side of the door. Childs hefted his
torch and took a couple of steps backward, nodding toward
Norris. The geophysicist threw the bolts and pulled on the
handle.
Sleet and hail and Nauls all came in a single, frozen mass.
Norris hastily put his weight against the door and slammed
it shut, then rethrew the restraining bolts. Sanders had to
help him.
Totally winded, Nauls knelt on the hard floor, head bent,
hands resting on his knees. The men gathered around him,
watching him closely.
"Where's Macready?" Palmer asked.
The cook's head came up. His expression, beneath the ice
melting from his face and the rim of his hood, was grim. He
tore off the snow goggles and flung them aside, then dug
down inside the bulky front of his parka.
"Cut him loose from the line up by his shack," he
mumbled, still fumbling with the parka.
Childs gaped down at him. "Cut him loose?"
"Had to." The cook swallowed. "When we were poking
around his place I found this." He pulled a thick wad of
clothing from his jacket. It was torn and blackened at the
edges, showing clear evidence of having been burned.
He turned out the collar. The name tag inside read
clearly: R.J. MACREADY. Norris and the others gathered
around, each inspecting the clothing intently.
Nauls let out a long whoosh and climbed painfully to his
feet. "It was stashed in his old propane furnace. The wind
must have dislodged it and knocked it down where I could
find it. I don't think he saw me find it. In fact, I know he
didn't, or I wouldn't be here showing it to you now."
The men continued to inspect the damning evidence, still
finding it hard to belief.
"Made sure I got ahead of him on the towline on the way
back, kept my mouth shut . . . cut him loose."
Sanders was incredulous. "I can't believe it. Macready?"
Nauls nodded slowly. "I know it's tough to buy, but it sure
as hell explains a lot. He's one of them. No wonder we've
been going around in circles for so long. Remember how he
took the gun and command from Garry? He's had us chasing
our tails for hours, been playing with us. He's one of those
things, all right."
 "When do you think it got to him?" Sanders inquired,
badly frightened all over again. He'd finally succeeded in
getting himself under control, and now this. Macready had
been about the only man in camp the radio operator really
trusted.
"Could have been anytime," Palmer murmured
disconsolately. "And anywhere."
Childs was frowning at Nauls. Something had been
bothering him ever since the exhausted cook had come
tumbling into the corridor. "If it did get to him."
Nauls turned on him. "Look, man . . .!"
"When the lights went out," Palmer was muttering.
"Would have been the perfect time," Norris added.
"Right," Palmer agreed. "Garry was missing. And
Sanders," he added pointedly.
"Fuck you, Palmer." The radio operator jumped his
accuser. Childs and Norris had to separate them.
"Here we go again," said the geophysicist, breathing
hard, "acting just like it wants. Can't you two peabrains get
that through your skulls? I don't think—"
A new hammering at the door interrupted him and made
everyone jump backward. Nauls cowered behind everyone
else, staring in terror at the door.
The sound of Macready's voice in between the pounding
was unmistakable. "Open up!"
Nobody answered. Norris and Childs raised their
blowtorches and pointed them at the door, continuing to
back slowly down the corridor.
"Hey, somebody!" the voice continued. "Open up! It's me,
Macready." The pounding resumed. "Come on, damn it! The
line snapped on me. Been crawling around like a seal out
here. Let me in."
Nauls's whisper was harsh in the corridor. "That's bullshit.
He's got to know damn well that I cut it. 'Snapped' my ass."
The men kept their voices down as they debated how to
proceed.
 "Let's open up," Palmer suggested, indicating the torches.
"We've got him covered if he tries anything."
Childs glared at him, ignoring the pounding at the door.
"Hell, no. I was out on the ice when it took Bennings. You
can't believe how fast these suckers can move. The door
stays closed, man."
Sanders was shaking and didn't give a damn if anyone
noticed. "You think he's changed into one of those things?"
Norris checked his watch. "He hasn't had enough time."
"How do you know, man?" the radio operator asked him.
"Blair said it takes at least an hour."
"Blair don't know nothing. Blair's crazy. Maybe it don't
take an hour. Maybe only thirty minutes."
"It's the best estimate we have to work with," Norris
argued back. "Hell, it's the only estimate we have to work
with. I admit I'm not sure about how long he's been outside
but I don't think it's been an hour yet."
Childs was staring at the door, talking to himself.
"Nothing human could have made it back here in this
weather without a guideline." The wind roared beyond the
door, accentuating the mechanic's point.
"Where is everybody?" Macready demanded to know from
the other side of the barrier. His voice was weak, tired. "I'm
half frostbit."
Palmer took a hesitant step toward the door. "Let's open
it. Now."
"Why are you so damn anxious to let him in here?" Childs
asked venomously.
Palmer was trembling slightly. "He's so close. If he has
changed, this'd be our best chance to blow him away."
Childs vetoed the idea. "No. Why risk it? Just let him
freeze out there."
Sanders voice cracked as be spoke. "What if we're wrong
about him? What if that's the real Macready out there, trying
to get in? He'll freeze to death. What if we're wrong, man?"
"Then we're wrong," Childs told him coldly.
 They waited. Several minutes passed. The pounding
faded, finally stopped altogether.
"Maybe he's unconscious," Sanders ventured. "We could
open the door and give it a fast check."
Norris shook his head. "If you're so damn curious, look out
the windows."
Sanders hesitated, then moved forward. He pressed his
face against the inner pane and squeezed sideways as he
tried to see the doorstep.
"I don't see nothing."
Palmer moved forward and peered out the other window.
"Neither do I. If he collapsed against the door, he'd be out of
our lines of sight. And it's darker than a witch's bedroom out
there."
A muffled noise reached them. Everyone turned at the
sound of breaking glass.
Palmer's eyes bulged. "The window to supply room G. It's
not a triple pane!"
Sanders pressed back against the wall next to the door.
"What are we going to do? What are we going to do?"
"Get a grip on yourself, man," Norris ordered him. "You go
off the deep end, nobody's going to have the time to hold
your hand." The radio operator nodded slowly, took deep,
measured breaths as he fought to comply.
The geophysicist's fingers tightened on the blowtorch. He
stared resolutely down the corridor. "All right, we've got no
choice now." He and Childs led the way, the others trailing
close behind.
It was pitch black inside the supply room. Macready
cursed a blue streak as he hunted frantically for a light
switch. He was weak and suffereing from mild hypothermia.
Voices sounded outside the door. "What's going on out
there?" Macready yelled angrily. "How come nobody let me
in? Don't you assholes tell me you didn't hear me, either."
Palmer stood to one side, holding his torch on the door as
Childs tried the knob. Locked.
 "Dammit," the mechanic murmured, remembering. "He's
got the storeroom keys."
"Isn't there another set?"
Childs looked doubtful. "Garry might have another one
stashed somewhere, but he's too doped up to think straight.
Anyway, we can't afford to wait that long." He looked up the
hall, then strode purposefully the other way and ripped a fire
axe off the paneling. Norris, Palmer and the others backed
off and gave him plenty of room as he started chopping at
the door.
Macready's confused but steady voice echoed from the
other side. "Hey! What the blazes are you guys doing?"
"You're a dead man, Macready." Childs raised the axe,
swung again. "Or a dead whatever the hell you are!"
"Are you guys crazy?"
"No," said the mechanic as he worked, "and we're not
going to let you make us that way, either." The axe bit
deeply into the yielding wood.
Macready was silent, though they could hear him
bumping around inside.
Go outside, Palmer was thinking urgently. Go and freeze
outside so we won't have to do it do you.
"We found your clothes," Childs was saying. "The ones
you tried to burn."
"What clothes?" Macready demanded to know.
"Forget it, Macready." The mechanic was swinging the axe
like a madman. "You been made. it's all over."
"Someone's trying to mark me, you crazy bastard! Trying
to frame me." They could hear him messing around with the
supplies inside.
Childs cautioned Palmer and Norris as he readied the last
couple of blows. "Move in slow now. Watch yourselves. These
things are tricky. He might try hanging from the roof or
something, so don't look just straight ahead. You ready?"
Both men nodded.
 With a last swing the wood surrounding the lock and
doorknob gave way. Childs gave the freed barrier a solid kick
and stepped aside. Palmer moved into the breach, his finger
tense on the trigger of the blowtorch. Norris was right
behind him.
They froze simultaneously, staring.
Macready stood in front of them, holding a burning flare
in his left hand. His hair and beard were white with snow,
but his eyes were clear. Frostbite darkened cheeks and nose.
Tucked beneath his right arms was a box labeled
"DYNAMITE." The top of the box was missing and the pilot
held the sputtering flare dangerously close to the exposed
red cylinders. The individual fuses had been cut to quarter-
inch lengths.
"Anybody messes with me," he said menacingly, "and the
whole camp goes up . . ."
 None of the men standing in the hallway was anxious to
test Macready's resolve. They stood staring at him, waiting
helplessly to see what he'd do next.
"Put those torches on the floor and back off. Very slowly.
No fast moves or we'll all warm up in a hurry. For the last
time."
Keeping his eyes on Macready, Norris bent and gently put
his blowtorch down. Childs laid the axe carefully alongside
it, followed by Sanders and Palmer. They backed out into the
hall.
Macready moved toward them, forcing them to continue
the retreat. "That's it, back way off."
They were all out in the corridor now and moving toward
the recreation room. They hadn't gone far when Macready
frowned and started to look over a shoulder.
"Hey, where's the rest of—"
Nauls and Norris came barreling out of the supply room
into the pilot. They'd rushed outside and returned via the
busted supply room window. Hands grabbed for the flare.
Macready spun Nauls off his back and put his shoulder
into Norris, sending the older man crashing violently into the
wall. Nauls rolled, tackled Macready's legs and brought him
to his knees. The others rushed forward.
But Macready still had control of the flare and the
dynamite, and started to bring the two together. "So help
me," be yelled at them, his voice breaking, "I mean it!"
They skidded to a halt. Nauls quickly let loose of the
pilot's legs and rolled to one side.
"It's cool, man," the cook assured him desperately. "We
ain't near you, man. Stay cool." He got to his knees, edged
over to join the rest of the tense group, making placating
motions with both hands.
"Yeah, man, really," a frantic Palmer added, his eyes
locked on the crate. "Just relax."
"Anybody touches me again," Macready warned them, his
eyes darting from one face to the next, "up we go."
Norris still lay on the floor where he'd fallen after striking
the wall. Now he coughed sharply and began to gasp for
breath. His whole body gave a little weak quiver and then he
was still.
Nauls crawled over to the geophysicist, shook him and
looked back toward his companions. "I don't think he's
breathing." He bent his head and put an ear on the older
man's chest.
Macready rose, watching the cook. A little concern crept
into his voice. "Go untie the doc and get him in here. Bring
the others, too." He grinned menacingly. "From now on no
one gets out of my sight."
They all started to move and he gestured threateningly
with the flare. "No. Childs, you and Sanders stay here. You
go, Palmer. Make it fast."
The assistant pilot nodded once, glad of the opportunity
to get away from the dynamite, and took off down the
corridor.
They waited. Nauls sat next to Norris's motionless form.
He stared accusingly at Macready. "He's not breathing. You
killed him, man."
"Shut up, Nauls. You talk too much."
Palmer was back in a hurry, supporting the doctor with an
arm around his back. Garry and Clark had recovered enough
to stagger unsteadily along behind.
Copper glanced once at Macready, took in the pilot's
belligerent stance, the flare, the box of dynamite. "Mac,
what in . . .?"
"Never mind the cheery greetings, Doc. Save it for later."
He gestured toward Norris.
 Copper nodded understandingly and knelt over the
geophysicist's body. Nauls moved to one side. The doctor
checked the recumbent man's eyes, listened to his chest,
then looked back up at Macready.
"Get him to the infirmary. Fast. Only chance."
Macready nodded in agreement, looked at the others.
"Childs, Sanders, Nauls . . . pick him up and let's go. And
everyone stay in front of me and in clear view, got it? I don't
want anybody ducking into any open doorways and waiting
for me to come up next to them. I might trip, or get nervous,
or both."
Norris's body was laid out on the examination table. The
refrigerator and its legacy of ruined blood stood mutely
nearby, reminding everyone of the last time they'd gathered
in this room.
Copper turned to reach for something and nearly fell. He
was still woozy from the morphine. Palmer and Sanders
steadied him. Macready stood in a corner with his back
against the wall and watched.
Copper slipped an oxygen mask over Norris's face, then.
made a couple of passing grabs at the regulator attached to
the cylinder before finally getting a hand on it. He twisted
the valve control and a hissing sound filled the room. The
dial on the regulator came alive.
Bending over Norris, the doctor ripped the man's shirt
open and yanked apart the stained undershirt. He worked
laboriously, inhibited by the aftereffects of the drug still
coursing through his system. He didn't look up at Macready
when the pilot spoke, instead continued working on his
patient.
"So you sweethearts had yourselves a little trial. I may,
just have to kill you on general principles, Nauls." The cook
spat at him.
"You might already have done that to Norris." Behind him,
Copper was swathing the geophysicist's chest with a
gleaming oleaginous substance.
 Macready allowed himself a mild sneer. "Did it ever occur
to the jury that anybody could have gotten to some of my
clothes and fixed them up to look nice and incriminating
like?" His tone was casual but his attitude was not. The flare
still hovered dangerously close to the dynamite.
"We ain't buying that," said the surly Childs.
"Dammit, quit the bickering and give me a hand!" Copper
yelled at them. "Somebody wheel that fibrillator over here."
"The what?" Childs asked.
"The machine, there, and fast!" Copper replied
exasperatedly.
Keeping a cautious eye on the pilot and moving
deliberately so as not to alarm him, Sanders grabbed the
handles of the cart and pushed it close to the table. Copper
promptly climbed onto the table and straddled Norris's
chest.
With Copper and the motionless Norris occupying the
table and with Sanders standing close by the fibrillator,
Clark was screened from Macready's sight. Casually he let
his right hand drift toward the tray of surgical instruments
on the second shelf of the cart. He quietly sorted through
them, discarding shining forceps, a delicate clamp, a pair of
tweezers, while keeping a close watch on Macready and the
drama taking place on the table.
No one saw his fingers close around the haft of the
gleaming scalpel. He slowly reversed it, pointing the blade
up his sleeve, the handle hidden in his palm.
Copper spun to his right. "Palmer, turn the oxygen up
another notch . . . to nine, and hold the mask down over his
face so he can't throw it off." The assistant pilot hurried to
comply. "Childs, you grab his shoulders."
"Right." The mechanic moved around to the front of the
table, careful not to get too close to Macready. He put
massive hands on either side of Norris's head and leaned
forward, using his weight.
 Copper reached toward the cart and grabbed a pair of
palm-sized pads. They were attached to the machine by
thick cords. While Childs waited he took the opportunity to
smile meaningfully at Macready.
"You're going to have to sleep sometime."
Copper glanced over at him. "Quiet down." He nodded to
Sanders. "Turn that thing on."
Sanders's fingers nudged the "on" button forward. A
warning light located just below the switch came to life and
a low hum rose from the machine.
"Now hold him down. Push hard, if you have to," Copper
instructed the mechanic.
"I'm a real light sleeper, Childs." Macready returned the
smile easily.
"Shut up, Macready!" Busy as he was, Copper still found
the energy to be angry.
Leaning forward, he pressed the two padded contact
plates to the geophysicist's chest. Norris's body heaved
upward as the current shot through him. There was a slight
crackling sound and an odd chirp from behind the oxygen
mask.
Copper removed the pads. Norris's chest did not move.
The doctor spoke urgently to Sanders. "Again. More current
this time." The radio operator stared blankly at the complex
instrument.
Copper leaned back and pointed. "There's a dial next to
the "on" switch. It's set on three. Turn it up to six." Sanders
nodded, and did as directed.
Another buzz from the machine. Copper gave the bare,
treated skin several jolts. Sanders watched anxiously. So did
Clark, the scalpel completely hidden by his hand and
shirtsleeve. He started to work his way as inconspicuously as
he could around the table. No one paid him any attention.
"And if anyone tries to wake me," Macready was saying
easily, "my little alarm here's liable to go off and put
everybody back to sleep." He patted the side of the
dynamite box with the still-burning flare. Palmer winced.
"Damn you, Macready, that's enough!" Copper berated
him. He touched the contacts to Norris's chest again.
And this time there was a reaction. It was as explosive
and violent as it was unexpected. Norris's body arched off
the table and nearly threw the doctor to the floor. The doctor
looked like a bull rider, bouncing crazily on the
geophysicist's heaving body.
A new crackling sound filled the room, and it didn't come
from the fibrillator. Norris's sternum cracked like a lake bed
in the Sahara. The skin peeled back and flaked off in fleshy
strips. The oxygen mask was blown toward the ceiling as
Palmer back-pedaled to get away from the unnaturally
contorting corpse.
A sound came out of Norris's mouth, but it wasn't
produced by the man they'd known as Norris. It was a
hideous, grating, angry mewing noise.
Copper threw himself off the bucking body and landed
hard on the floor. No one moved to give him a hand. They
were all mesmerized by the transformation that was coming
over the geophysicist's suddenly active form.
Sanders had abandoned the fibrillator and pressed
himself back against the nearest wall. "Madre de dios, what .
. ."
The thing that had been Norris was changing in front of
their eyes. This wasn't like that time in the dark kennel, or
that horrible night out on the ice sheet. The infirmary lights
were bright and efficient. They could clearly see every detail
of the noisome metamorphosis.
Clothing tore as organic matter beneath it swelled past
restraining polyester bonds. A shoe split like a melon and
fell from the table. A single talon became visible inside the
expanding, more flexible sock. Other appendages rapidly
began to take shape, a gruesome assortment of hooks and
bulges and knobby growths that owed their development to
no line of earthly evolution.
Macready had put the dynamite and flare on the floor. He
charged the table with one of the blowtorches, pushing
everyone else aside.
"Get out of the way!"
A stream of fire unloaded on the thing dancing on the
infirmary table. The body seemed unable to dodge, whether
because it was still incomplete or because the repeated
charges from the fibrillator had inhibited its abilities.
Macready couldn't tell—not that he gave a damn. The fire
spread to the table, which burned merrily.
Belching and hissing, the barely recognizable remnants
of Norris's body tumbled to the floor. Macready backed off a
step, continued to play the nozzle of the blowtorch across it.
Somehow the flaming, indistinct mass of protoplasm
managed to straighten up. It towered over him for a
moment, then turned and staggered a couple of feet toward
the doorway on things that weren't legs. A black and yellow
ooze exploded through the shredded trousers and squirted
all over the floor. Macready methodically turned the fire on
it.
The monstrosity staggered backward and collapsed onto
the fibrillator. It lay there, writhing with horrid, alien life, and
burning furiously.
The men watched as it melted into a molten, shapeless
mass of burning protoplasm. It smoked intensely. Macready
was reminded of a magnesium flare, or the white
phosphorus AP bombs the military occasionally used back in
'Nam.
Fire extinguishers were pulled from their holders and
brought into play. The fibrillator was a wreck, scorched and
blackened, the plastic plates over its readouts melted away.
The infirmary table wasn't in much better shape.
While they worked they had to avoid smoking puddles of
black goo that still burned on the floor, twitching agitatedly
in their tiny agony. Eventually they died, too, their tiny
mews fading away into silence.
All eyes traveled to Macready, who'd backed away and
was once more standing with the box of dynamite. The flare
had finally burnt itself out, but he held the torch ready. That
would be slower, but not slow enough.
"Everybody into the rec room," he told them, breaking
the stunned silence. "Nobody steps out of anybody else's
sight, got that? I've got an idea."
They shuffled out of the room in a body, occasionally
turning for a glance back at the smoking surgical table. No
one said anything or objected to Macready's order. Their
initial anger at the pilot had been replaced by a dull terror
that Norris's unmasking did nothing to alleviate.
Macready waited until he was certain that everyone
who'd been in the infirmary had moved into the rec room.
Then he edged in behind them, always keeping his back
against a wall. Putting down the box of dynamite, he used
his free hand to draw Garry's Magnum from a jacket pocket.
The rest of the crew milled around on the other side of
the room and watched him. He set the dynamite on one of
the card tables where everyone could see it clearly.
"What you got in mind, Macready?" Clark wondered
aloud. "It better be good."
"Oh, it's nothing elaborate." The pilot grinned at him.
"Just a little test I've thought up. Sometimes experience can
be more enlightening than a Ph.D."
"What the hell are you raving about, Macready?" Copper
muttered disconsolately.
"You'll see, Doc, just like everybody else." He carefully
adjusted the aperture of the torch he was holding, setting it
for a short, intense throw.
"What kind of test?" Palmer asked. He was subdued after
the episode in the infirmary. A kind of dull despair had
settled over the men. It wasn't quite hopelessness. Net yet.
It was more of a feeling that they'd finally lost all control
over their chances for survival, that their destiny lay in the
hands of something not human.
Only Macready was still defiant and unresigned. Given
their present opinion of him, that only left the others feeling
more discouraged than ever.
"What kind of test?" he repeated grimly. "I'm sure some of
you already know."
There was plenty of rope in the room, cut segments of
varying length plus the rest of the large spool they'd been
pared from. The rope had been brought in and used to bind
Clark, Garry, and Copper. Macready kicked it toward his
reluctant assistant. It rolled to a halt at the younger man's
feet.
"Palmer, you and Copper tie everyone else down. Real
tight. I'll be watching you."
"What for?" Childs had considered taking a leap at the
pilot, but the proximity of dynamite and blowtorch
restrained him. Someone was going to have to try something
pretty soon, though. No telling what Macready was up to.
"For your health," the pilot told him. He didn't sound
sarcastic, either.
Garry looked at the others. "Let's rush him. He's not going
to blow us up."
"Damned if I won't," Macready said brightly.
Childs took a step forward. "You ain't tying me up."
"Then I'll have to kill you."
Childs glared evenly back at the other man, nodding
curtly. "Then kill me."
Macready raised the muzzle of the .44 until it was
pointing straight at Childs's forehead. "I mean it." The click
of the hammer going back was loud in the room.
"I guess you do," said Childs quietly.
The pilot hesitated, his finger tense on the trigger. There
was movement out of the corner of his eye. An instant in
which his brain registered several events simultaneously.
Clark—light on metal—scalpel—coming . . .
 He spun and fired twice in rapid succession. The force of
the powerful Magnum sent the dog handler spinning
backward. He clutched at himself, bounced off a nearby
chair, and collapsed to the floor.
Almost as quickly Macready had the gun turned on the
rest. The torch hovered dangerously over the dynamite.
"Don't," he warned them. A couple of the men had taken
steps toward him. "Palmer, get to work."
The assistant pilot dazedly took up the rope and after a
disbelieving glance at his boss began securing the others to
couches and chairs. It was slow going and he apologized to
each of them in turn as he drew the knots tight. Copper
worked in silence.
"Finished," both men finally announced.
"Not quite." Macready gestured with the Magnum. "Tie up
Copper, and then Clark."
Palmer frowned bemusedly as he looked down at the dog
handler. Clark lay where he'd fallen, bleeding and
unmoving. "What for? He's dead."
Macready shook his head. "You forget fast, don't you,
Palmer? Norris looked pretty dead himself. Bullets don't kill
these things, they just inconvenience 'em. Tie him up."
When that final gruesome task was completed he
motioned Palmer over to the doorway and smiled at the
others. "Don't anybody try anything. I'll be right back. In
much less than an hour," he added significantly.
The two men were gone only a few minutes. The
returning Palmer put another case of dynamite on the table,
then backed away from Macready and awaited further
orders.
"Okay, now untie the doc." Palmer complied. The doctor
stood, rubbing his wrists where the rope had begun to cut
"Sorry, Doc. I think you're okay. You blew Norris's cover,
made the thing reveal itself. I don't think you'd have used
that fibrillator if you were one of them. But I can't be a
hundred percent certain. Not yet."
 Copper smiled wanly at him, walked over and peered
curiously into the small box the pilot had put down next to
the two cases of explosive.
As he watched, Macready removed a Bunsen burner from
the box and attached its long rubber tubing to a gas outlet.
He used the blowtorch to light the burner. Sanders closed his
eyes when the torch came alive. It was still close to the
dynamite. Macready seemed not to care.
Putting down the Magnum he used a pocket knife to cut
the multiplug fixture off the end of an extension cord. Then
he stripped the insulation back to expose the wire. This was
done while still keeping the torch under one arm and a
careful eye on the rest of them. Finally he instructed Copper
to tie up Palmer.
"We should have jumped his ass." Childs was angry at his
own timidity.
"Maybe," muttered Sanders. "Too late now."
Macready finished his work. The Bunsen burner hissed
steadily.
"What're you up to, Mac?" Palmer looked uncomfortable.
Probably the ropes were hurting him.
"We're going to draw a little bit of everybody's blood,"
the pilot informed him.
Nauls let out a sharp, humorless laugh. "Right. What are
you going to do, drink it?"
Macready ignored him. "Watching what happened to
Norris back in there," he gestured toward the infirmary, "plus
what I remember from the night out on the ice when one of
these things killed Bennings gave me the idea that maybe
every part of these bastards is a whole. Every piece is self-
sufficient and can act independently if the need arises. An
animal unto itself.
"When a man bleeds it's just fluid loss, but blood from
one of these things doesn't just lie dormant. Remember
what Blair said about each cell being taken over
independently? Each one becomes a newly activated
individual life form, with the usual built-in desire to protect
itself from harm.
"Remember those little pieces of Norris, how they
squirmed around and gave off that mewling noise? When
attacked, it looks like even a fragment of one of these things
will try to survive as best it's able. Even a sample of its
blood.
"Of course, there's no higher nervous system, no brain to
suppress a natural instinct like that if it's in the best
interests of the larger whole to do so. The cells have to act
instinctively instead of intelligently. Protect themselves from
freezing, say. Or from incineration. The kind that might be
caused by a hot needle, for instance." He turned to face the
doctor.
"Copper, you do the honors."
"You said you thought I was safe because of what had
happened in the infirmary," Copper said.
Macready nodded affirmatively. "I said that I think you
are. I want to be sure."
Copper noted that the nozzle of the blowtorch had been
focused on his midsection ever since he'd tied up Palmer,
but he chose not to say anything about it. Obviously
Macready had no intention of trusting him until he'd run his
little test. There was no point in arguing with him.
"All right, I'll do as you ask, Mac." He picked up the
scalpel Clark had dropped and moved over to a chair.
"Sorry, Sanders. I've got no choice."
"That's okay, Doc." The radio operator grimaced as
Copper pressed gently against one bound finger. Blood
beaded up on the skin and dropped into the petri dish the
doctor held beneath the cut. The others stared.
"Now the rest," Macready said impatiently. The box he'd
carried the Bunsen burner in also contained a dish for
everyone in the room.
Copper moved among them, drawing a small quantity of
blood from each and returning the dishes to the table where
he labeled each with a marking pen.
He finished with Garry, marked the dish and wiped the
blade off on a now red-streaked cloth. "That's the last of
them."
"Not quite," Macready said, sliding a fresh dish toward
the doctor. "Now you."
Copper obligingly nicked his thumb, and watched as the
blood dribbled into the glass.
"Slide it back here," Macready directed him. The doctor
did as ordered. "Now step back. Way back, over there with
the others."
Copper complied. Sweat was beginning to collect on his
forehead. He nearly tripped over Childs's feet.
"And lastly, yours truly." Macready used the scalpel on his
own thumb, collected the blood in a last dish. Then he put
the bare copper wire protruding from the stripped end of the
extension cord into the flame from the Bunsen burner.
The men watched intently as the wire began to glow.
Macready held it steady in the bluest part of the flame,
keeping the torch aimed at the doctor. Both of them were
perspiring freely now.
When it was ready the pilot took the wire out of the flame
and brought it toward the nearest plate, the one containing
the sample of Copper's blood. His eyes were fixed on the
staring doctor and a finger was tense on the trigger of the
blowtorch.
A soft hiss rose from the petri dish. Macready reheated
the wire and repeated the experiment. Again the hissing,
and that was all. The blood in the dish had reacted normally.
Both men let out a sigh of relief.
"I guess you're okay, Doc."
Copper's relief was palpable and his reply was only
slightly facetious. "Thank you." He was trembling.
"Like I said," Macready reiterated, "I didn't think you'd
have used that current on Norris's body if you were one of
them." He favored the older man with a weak smile. "It's nice
to know for sure again that somebody's nothing more than
they're supposed to be.
"Here. Give me a hand." He handed over the torch.
"Watch them. And don't forget the dynamite."
Copper nodded, resolutely training the unfamiliar
instrument on the bound men while Macready moved his
own dish to the edge of the table where everyone could see
it clearly.
"Now I'll show you all what I already know and what you
can't seem to believe." He heated the wire and stuck the tip
into his blood. The same harmless hissing that had risen
from Copper's dish now rose from his own. As with Copper,
he repeated the action. Same result.
Childs turned away, unable to meet the pilot's gaze.
"Doesn't mean anything. Load of bullshit."
"Yeah? We'll see." He studied the dishes, chose another.
"Let's try Clark." He heated the wire again, placed it in the
handler's dish. More hissing . . . and nothing else.
Childs glanced up at him. "So according to your figuring,
that means Clark was human, right?" Macready nodded
slowly. "So that makes you a murderer."
Macready ignored him, looked over the group. "Palmer
now." He pulled out the proper dish and put the wire into the
steady flame from the burner.
Garry was shifting uncomfortably on the couch. His arms
were cramping. "Pure nonsense, like Childs says. This won't
prove a damn thing."
"That's just what it's supposed to prove." Macready gave
the station manager a nasty grin. "I thought you'd feel that
way, Garry. You were the only one who could have gotten at
the blood in the infirmary refrigerator." He put the wire into
Palmer's dish. "We'll do you last."
A horrible screech filled the room, sharp and piercing . . .
and unexpected.
It came from the red liquid in the petri dish, which was
making an amoeba-like attempt to crawl up the vertical
walls of the glass . . .
 With incredible force Palmer exploded out of his seat
straight toward Macready, dragging the couch with Garry
and Childs still tied to it along with him. His face was
splintering as something fought to get out from behind the
fleshy human mask. He barreled into Macready and knocked
him clear over the other card table.
"Copper!" the pilot screamed as he went over backward.
The room was filled with shouts and curses as men fought
their restraints. Shouts and curses and a deep, inhuman
bellowing.
The doctor tried to fire, but mishandled the unfamiliar
controls of the blowtorch. By that time the steadily changing
thing that had been Palmer had burst its bonds and jumped
on the older man.
Macready dove onto Palmer's back and the three of them
went rolling across the floor. He pounded at the head until a
huge, not quite formed arachnid arm split out of the shirt
and sent the pilot skidding across the linoleum.
The distraction allowed Copper to regain control of the
torch. He swung it around, trying to aim it. There was an
awful crackling like the splintering of heavy plastic.
Palmer's mouth split from chin to forehead. A new mouth,
dark and vitreous and horrible, moved forward and inhaled
the entirety of the doctor's head.
The torch went flying, bouncing off a wall. Climbing to its
feet the Palmer-thing wrapped lengthening arms around the
dangling, twitching body of the unfortunate doctor. The rest
of the men were hysterical. Sanders was crying and praying,
refusing to open his eyes, hoping that if he didn't look upon
the horror it might go away.
 Macready shook the cobwebs out of his brain and
scrambled across the floor to grab up the torch. He raised it,
aimed and fired.
Nothing happened. The blow against the wall had
damaged it. Frustrated, he got behind Palmer and began
hammering on the shifting, changing skull.
The shirt on Palmer's back erupted in the pilot's face,
exposing not an arm this time but the beginnings of a
second set of jaws. Something like a tentacle lunged out of
the widening maw, reaching for Macready. He managed to
dodge it, throwing himself backward. He bumped into the
overloaded table and howled as the Bunsen burner scorched
one hand.
Burner . . . he fought for balance, dug at the nearest box
of dynamite and pulled out three sticks. He passed the short
fuses over the hissing burner. They caught instantly.
Palmer was turning in awkward circles. The body of the
doctor hung limply from the contracted mouth, swinging
and throwing the thing off balance as it turned to advance
on Macready. The second mouth was spitting and snarling as
it continued to take shape.
The pilot dodged and ducked, almost knocked sideways
by the whirling body of Copper as the thing tried to decide
what to do with the doctor while simultaneously focusing on
Macready and changing into its natural form. Macready
waited until it was barely a yard from him before tossing the
lit roll of explosives into the ever-evolving orifice that sought
for him.
There was nothing left of the fuse as the pilot turned and
flung himself toward the couch, covering Garry and Childs
with his body.
There came a muffled boom. Parts of limbs and skin and
half-formed organs of unknown purpose and peculiar design
went flying in all directions. There was surprisingly little
blood or any other kind of fluid, for that matter.
But there was a lot of something else.
 As they dried out, droplets of cremated flesh continued to
slough off the ceiling and rain down on the benumbed men.
Macready climbed off his two helpless charges. It took him
longer than normal because he was shaking so badly.
"You two okay? Childs? Garry?" Both of them nodded.
After regaining his bearings Macready pulled one of the
remaining torches from the box on the table. Then he spent
a gratifying if disgusting ten minutes frying every fragment
of the thing that still showed signs of life. When that was
done, he sat down in a battered chair and waited.
Eventually he'd calmed down enough to resume the
testing. Copper wasn't around to help him now. His hand still
trembled slightly as he heated the wire in the burner. Thank
God, he mused, it hadn't been snuffed out during the fight,
or the tubing pulled out of the wall. If that had happened
the room would have filled up with gas, which the explosion
would have ignited, and all their troubles would have been
over. Because all of us would've been all over, he thought.
He checked the dish's identification: Nauls. Copper had
written that. Copper was gone now.
Quit thinking about it, he ordered himself. It's not over
yet. He looked over toward the cook.
Nauls closed his eyes and tensed as Macready touched
the hot wire to the dish. It generated a mild, unthreatening
hiss. Macready exhaled slowly and Nauls opened his eyes.
He didn't even bother with the obligatory second try. That
didn't seem necessary anymore, not after the way Palmer's
blood had reacted. Moving around the table he untied the
cook, keeping a torch aimed at the others. Nauls accepted
the torch and took up the guard duties while the pilot
returned to the burner and reheated the wire.
Sanders next. Macready ran the test, was rewarded with
another hissing. The radio operator lost control of himself
and sobbed on his knees.
Macready nodded to Nauls, who walked over and untied
the distraught Sanders. "Come on, man," he told him, "get
yourself together. We ain't got time for this. You're clear, but
we ain't finished yet."
Sanders nodded, wiped his face with his freed hands and
was given another of the small blowtorches.
Childs looked stoical as the two younger men moved to
cover him. His gaze was on Macready.
"Let's do it, man."
The wire dipped into the dish, was followed by the
familiar, harmless hissing. The muscles of the mechanic's
face melted into a relieved smile.
"Muthafu . . ." He couldn't finish the word. It trailed off
into the wheeze of the Bunsen burner.
Suddenly it struck him who or what he might be sitting
next to. He started trying to pull away, his eyes wide with
the realization.
"Get me . . . get me the hell away from . . . cut me loose,
damn it! Somebody, cut me loose!"
Nauls hurried to comply, and began sawing at the ropes
with the scalpel as Sanders and Macready stood guard.
Garry, ignoring the mechanic's hysteria, didn't move. Childs
nearly fell in his haste to get off the couch and away from
the station manager.
"Gasoline," Macready said stolidly. Sanders hurried out of
the room, returned in minutes with a two-gallon can whose
contents be proceeded to dump over Garry's head. Garry
continued to sit motionless on the couch, staring straight
ahead. The radio operator backed off, raising his torch, his
face full of fright but ready nonetheless.
Nobody breathed. Childs had picked up a torch. His finger
was tense on the trigger as he stared expectantly at Garry.
Macready readied himself as he slowly brought the heated
wire down into the last dish.
It produced the comforting hiss of evaporating blood. The
pilot frowned and tried it a second time, got the same result.
The blood boiled away freely and did nothing to hint that it
could be anything except normal human blood.
 Everyone let out a sigh of relief. Sanders cracked up
again, this time out of happiness. Childs flopped
exhaustedly into an empty chair a Macready wiped his face.
There was a long silence.
"I know you gentlemen have been through a lot," the
station manager finally said quietly, "but when you find the
time, I'd rather not spend the rest of the winter tied to this
couch."
Childs started to giggle. For the first time in days, the
strain began to slip from Macready's face. Nauls scowled at
Childs's uncontrollable laughter.
The wind howled overhead, tearing ineffectually at the
roof. It had never stopped, but during the past anxious hours
it had been completely forgotten. Now it was a familiar,
friendly reminder of threats that were quite normal. The men
welcomed it.
The cook put aside his torch and walked over to untie the
station manager, grumbling at Childs.
"Okay, man, we're all happy. That's enough."
Childs choked back his remaining laughter and wiped
tears from his eyes. He sat up and grinned at Macready.
The grin vanished immediately. The pilot was staring,
silent and stone-faced, out the window. Snow and ice
battered at the triple-paned glass. Childs frowned,
connecting the stare with some long-forgotten thoughts. His
eyes grew wide as he remembered.
Macready had remembered first. "Blair," he whispered.
The wind roared and clutched at the three men who
pulled themselves forward along the guide ropes. Each man
carried a flashlight, a flare, and a blowtorch. In addition,
Macready's parka was filled with enough dynamite to
demolish the entire outpost.
The flares flickered weakly in the gale, but still far
outshone the beams from the flashlights. Ice formed on
warm beards, stung the men's faces and tried to freeze over
their snow goggles.
 It wasn't far to the toolshed where they'd imprisoned
Blair, but the storm made it seem like ten miles. Icy wind
ripped at them, trying to tear their gloved hands away from
the life-saving guide ropes so it could send them spinning
blindly off into the Antarctic night. Twenty yards from the
compound the orange smear provided by its external lights
was wiped out by blowing snow. Without the flares and
flashlights the trio making their way up toward the shed
would have been completely blind.
Macready and Childs readied themselves as they neared
the shed. Nauls banged into them from behind and the men
exchanged irritated looks, but no one said anything.
They could see the shed clearly now. The heavy boards
that had sealed off the entrance lay scattered about in the
snow. They'd been broken or torn from their nails. The door
flapped in the gale, banging against the front wall of the
building.
They paused in front of the doorway, trying to steady
themselves against the wind. Macready and Childs had their
torches out and the flares held in front of them.
"See anything?" Childs shouted. The wind made his voice
seem to come from far away, though they were standing
next to each other.
"No." Macready gestured with his flare and Childs nodded
his understanding. They entered together.
It was much quieter inside the shed. Unlike at Macready's
old shed the roof was still intact here. They strolled around
the single room. Nauls checked the portajohn chamber. The
table still stood in the center of the room. Off to one side was
the single cot. There were two stacks of canned goods, a
neat pile of spare blankets, and a large can full of drinking
water. Heat poured from the portable propane radiator.
Everything appeared normal, undisturbed, except . . . the
door had been broken open, and there was no sign of Blair.
Childs tumbled in the darkness and uttered a soft curse.
He looked down to see what had tripped him, and suddenly
he was on his knees.
"Hey Mac, Nauls . . . come here."
They joined him, staring downward. The loose floorboard
that had caught his boot came up easily. So did those
immediately around it.
Nauls turned his flashlight downward while Childs and
Macready held their flares over the opening. Instead of dull
ice there was a large hole. The cook moved his light around
but was unable to locate a side wall.
There was something in the hole, something large and
inorganic. It reflected the light.
Macready's voice was hushed. "Let's get the rest of these
boards up." Childs bent to lend a hand.
It didn't take long to remove the rest of the floor. All the
boards had been loosened, the nails removed, and then had
carefully been laid back in place. Only a loose plank like the
one that had tripped up Childs would have warned an
observer that something was amiss in the toolshed.
When they finally finished they found themselves
standing in the shed's doorway. The excavation occupied the
entire interior of the shed. The metallic object nearly filled it.
It was crudely fashioned, but streamlined. Sheets of
corrugated steel lay piled in one corner. The corrugations
had been smoothed out and the sheets sandwiched together
to form thick plates. There was no sign of bolts or welding.
Enough gaps and rough places showed in the object to
indicate that it was still incomplete.
"What is it?" Nauls muttered, trying to make sense out of
the peculiar angles and ridges.
"Everything that's been missing," Macready told him.
"The magnetos, electronic components, other supplies. I'll
bet your food processor's in there somewhere, too. The
motor, anyway." He nodded at the construction. "All of that
missing stuff's been worked into . . . this."
"Spaceship of some kind," Childs whispered in awe.
 "I hope to hell not," Macready countered. "If it's that
smart maybe we ought to just give ourselves up and let it
take over. But I wouldn't bet on it." He leaned into the hole
and moved his flare around, illuminating different portions
of the incomplete vehicle.
"I'm sure as hell no engineer, but I know a little bit about
flying machinery. I don't see how it could make the walls
thick enough, or where it would get the compounds to make
a powerful enough propellant. Of course, maybe it doesn't
need thick walls. Maybe it uses some kind of energy shield
instead. Hell, maybe it just climbs aboard and wishes itself
elsewhere.
"But I'd bet against the spacecraft theory."
"What then?" Childs asked.
Macready continued to scan it with the flare. "It's some
kind of ship, for sure. Since it doesn't need a spaceship, I'd
bet on some kind of aircraft. Or a short-range rocket-booster.
Smart son of a bitch. He put it together piece by piece. And
all this time we've been worrying about poor, cooped-up,
crazy Blair. I'll bet he hasn't been 'Blair' for some time." He
pulled his head out of the hole and nodded back in the
direction of the main compound.
"All the others—Palmer and the dogs, they were just
decoys to keep us away from here, keep us occupied so the
thing could work on this in peace. Almost worked, too, would
have, if we hadn't come up with that new test."
Nauls stared into the hole. "Where was he trying to go?"
"Anyplace but here," Macready replied. He unsnapped his
parka and searched inside, extricating a bundle of taped
dynamite. "But he ain't going to make it."
A screeching. Piercing and far away, smothered by the
gale blowing outside, but it made Macready twitch
nonetheless.
"Hurry," Childs urged him.
Macready nodded, then used his lighter to ignite the fuse.
They backed out of the doorway and he tossed it into the
excavation.
They were a minute down the walkway, clutching the
guide ropes for support as well as guidance, when the ice
heaved behind them. Even in the storm it was satisfyingly
loud. Fragments of metal and wood showered past them.
"That's that, then," muttered Nauls.
"Yeah." Childs tapped him on the shoulder. "Watch where
you're going." A gust of wind knocked him sideways as he
tried to step around the cook. His boots spun on the slick
surface and he grabbed the rope with both hands as he went
down on his knees, trying to steady himself.
Then the rope was gone, all tension vanished as it gave
way somewhere behind them. The end went whistling past
the mechanic and the wind sent him tumbling after it.
Macready clung to his own fragment of line as he saw
Childs vanish into the darkness. Something bumped into
him from behind and he screamed. It yelled back at him as it
skittered off into the snow.
Good-bye, Nauls.
The screeching came again, louder this time. It was
definitely somewhere behind him.
Frantically, Macready fought to orient himself. The
compound had to be there, straight ahead. He thought he
could make out the dim glow of the outside lighting, but he
wasn't sure. It might be that exhaustion and cold were
making him see lights where there weren't any. He struggled
forward on hands and knees, hoping he was crawling in the
right direction.
That awful, grating wail was growing nearer. Was it
coming after him or was he heading toward it? He
remembered what had happened to Copper, remember the
half-formed abomination that had come out of that yawning
mouth before he'd fed it the dynamite. It might be at his
heels now, flicking about over the snow, searching for him,
waiting to wrap itself around a leg and draw him down, down
into . . .
 He missed the entrance to the dog kennel and its outside
doorway, missed seeing Nauls crawl over the rim to tumble
down the open ramp to safety.
But he bumped up against the main compound.
Desperately he began searching along the wall. The supply
room window he'd used to get inside when they'd locked
him out, earlier ought to be nearby, a little to the right.
And then he was falling. It was a short, unexpected drop.
The frozen burned plants he landed on did nothing to
cushion his fall. He rolled over, holding a throbbing shoulder.
It rotated. Nothing broken, then.
Standing up he took stock of his surroundings, noted the
shattered skylight he'd fallen through, and tried to orient
himself. Where the hell was he? Couldn't be supp . . . oh
yeah. Childs's illegal-but-tolerated "garden." He stumbled
forward and rested against the open door as he caught his
breath.
Something groaned overhead, followed by a tinkling
sound. He looked up at the skylight. Something was bending
the steel-support bars outward, widening the opening so it
could get inside.
He sprinted for the hallway door. Fuchs's frozen corpse
was there to greet him, still pinned to the wood by the
deeply imbedded axe. The body was blocking the door
handle.
The splintering sound grew suddenly loud behind him. A
backward glance showed something black and knobby
flailing around inside the garden room.
Unaware that he was moaning softly, Macready finally got
Fuchs out of the way long enough to wrench open the door.
He slammed it shut behind him and threw the latch.
He rushed up the corridor, skidding around the turns and
taking steps two at a time, locking every intervening door
behind him. His heart was hammering at his ribs as he raced
for the recreation room.
 Something slammed into him around the next junction
and he screamed.
"Shit, man!" said Nauls, almost crying. "Don't you ever
watch where you're going?"
"Christ." Macready eyed the cook up and down. They
hadn't been separated very long. Surely not long enough for
takeover to have occurred. "Where the hell did you come
from?"
"Fell into the doghouse," Nauls told him, fighting for
breath. "What about you?"
Macready looked back the way he'd come. The corridor
behind them was still quiet, still empty. He knew it wouldn't
stay that way for long.
"Came in through Childs's skylight. You know, the one
over the little room he and Palmer turned into their private
pot patch. The thing was right behind me." The knowledge
of how close it had actually been chilled him far more deeply
than had the brief sojourn outside.
"What do we do now?" Nauls was pleading for
reassurance.
Macready couldn't give him that, but he did have an idea.
"We know it doesn't like the cold. It can tolerate it, but
only for a while. We blew up its transportation and that
means it can't hang around looking like itself. It's got to find
another live body to take over. Come on." He started up the
corridor.
They worked quickly and efficiently in the recreation
room, pouring gasoline into empty bottles. They'd had three
of the small blowtorches left. All three now lay somewhere
outside in the snow, lost when the guide rope had been
severed. Neither man had any intention of going outside to
hunt for them. The Molotov cocktails would have to serve as
a substitute.
Garry was busy nearby, stringing a thin wire between two
battery-charged generators. Sanders had taken over the
task of readying the last of the Molotovs. He held the funnel
steady and emptied the last drop of gas from the last can
into the glass. The activity gave him back a little courage.
Coke adds life, he thought grimly, noticing the label on
the bottle. But not this time.
Macready sat at the nearby card table, fooling with some
empty gelatin capsules he'd scrounged from the infirmary. A
loaded hypo rested nearby. He'd inject a portion of the
syringe's contents into a capsule, carefully set it aside, and
move on to the next.
Nauls came skating in with another box of dynamite.
Repossession of his wheels boosted his confidence the same
way pouring the gas helped Sanders.
He put the crate alongside the others. There was now
enough of the explosive in the rec room to blow the
compound halfway to Tierra del Fuego.
He looked over at the busy Macready. "What are we going
to do about Childs?"
"Forget about Childs. He's gone." Macready spoke without
looking up from his work. "If he was still in control of himself
he'd have found his way back here an hour ago."
"You don't know that for sure, man." The cook used a
small crowbar to pry the lid off the dynamite crate.
"Remember how long you were stuck out there before we let
you back in?"
"You mean, before I let myself back in," Macready
reminded him. He shook his head regretfully, refused to
reconsider the matter. "He's been outside too long. That
thing out there's had too long to work on him. If it was able
to find him. The wind was pushing him along pretty good. He
could be halfway to the pole by now."
"But we don't know that," Nauls argued. "Why should it
bother with him? He's stuck out there in the snow, alone and
unarmed. It's got plenty of time to go looking for him.
Wouldn't it make more sense to ignore him and take care of
us first?"
 "Hell, how should I know?" Macready replied gruffly. "I
don't think like it does. But I'll bet you're right about one
thing."
"Yeah, what's that?"
"It getting ready to take care of us."
Garry spoke softly, separating the two with words. "Make
those fuses short, Nauls. They'll go off quicker if we need to
use them."
The cook nodded, favored the indifferent Macready with a
final scowl, and turned his attention to the linen wicks
protruding from each Molotov cocktail.
Garry rose and made sure the wire running across the
main entrance to the recreation room was stretched taut.
The two generators sat off to either side, out of sight from
the hallway. Macready had finished his task with the
capsules and was straining to maneuver a storage cabinet
into place, blocking one of the other side doorways.
Sanders put the last gas can aside and stared at the main
entrance and its almost invisible wire barrier. "What if it
doesn't come?"
Macready rammed his shoulder against the unwieldy
cabinet. "It'll come. It needs us. We're the only things left to
expropriate. Give me a hand with this, will ya?"
Sanders obliged, adding his weight to the pilot's. As soon
as the storage cabinet was in place they started wrestling
one of the heavy video game consoles toward the second
doorway. It took another console to complete the job. One of
the games was Space Invaders. No one tried to joke about it.
Macready turned to his helper, gesturing with a thumb
toward the last unbarred opening. "You and Nauls got to
block off the west side bunks, the mess hall, and the
kitchen."
Nauls looked at the pilot as if he'd gone over the edge.
"You crazy? It might be inside there already."
"Chance we got to take," replied Macready evenly. "We've
got to force him to come down the east side to the door
we've got rigged for him."
"Why me?" Nauls wanted to know.
Macready stared at him. "Why not you?"
"Okay, okay. Don't give me that what-are-you look." He
started for the door.
Sanders licked his lips and tried to think of a fault, any
fault, with Macready's reasoning. "He might just chose to
wait us out."
Macready shook his head. "Uh-uh, I think not. He froze
solid here once." He indicated the window and the howling
polar storm raging outside. "Maybe it's not as cold here now
as it was a hundred thousand years ago, but I'll bet it's cold
enough. He could freeze up again, and this time would be
the last time. So he's got to come inside."
"All right," countered the radio operator, "so he waits us
out from the inside."
Macready smiled. "That's where we've got him. As soon
as you and Nauls get back I'm going to blow the generator."
He indicated the rectangular metal shapes stacked neatly in
one corner. "Garry and I lugged all the portable heaters in
here. He'll have to come for us, or freeze." He turned and
started pushing a small couch toward the door blockaded by
the video consoles.
"We can run the portables off those." He nodded toward
the generators linked by the single wire. "We can sit here as
long as necessary and outlast him. But I don't think that'll
happen. He isn't stupid and he'll figure out his options are
limited. Oh, he'll come for us, all right."
Sanders joined Nauls in the doorway.
"Hold it a sec." Macready finished positioning the couch,
then went over to the card table where he'd been injecting
capsules.
He handed each of them one of the bright red containers.
They looked like ordinary cold pills.
"Sodium cyanide," he said quietly. "If it comes down to it,
put one between your cheek and gum and bite down hard.
This thing can't control anything that's dead. If it could,
Fuchs wouldn't be decorating the door in Corridor G."
Sanders and Nauls regarded the capsules silently.
"If it gets a hold of you, like it did Copper, use 'em. This
stuff's supposed to be fast and painless. They issued me
something like it in 'Nam. Never thought I might have to use
it here. Now, move it."
They vanished down the hallway. Macready listened until
the rumble of Naul's skates faded into the wind. Then he
turned to where Sanders had been working and started
checking the wicks on the Molotovs.
Garry was running current through the wire blocking the
main entrance. The generators hummed, the air crackled,
and there was a satisfying amount of smoke and sparks.
"Looks good," Macready complimented him.
"A thousand volts." The station manager checked the
reserve level on one of the generators. "That ought to be
enough. It's a hell of a lot more than the doc gave the thing
that was trying to look like Norris."
Nauls shoved the portable stove around on greased
wheels. It squeaked anyway. He managed to wedge it
against a locked kitchen door. Across the room Sanders was
rolling one of the refrigerators in front of a second door. As
soon as it was in position, he bent over and jammed the
butcher knives he was carrying into the rollers.
A sudden surge of sound drifted in to them. A purring,
bubbling noise. Sanders froze, and turned to face Nauls.
"You hear that, man?"
Nauls glanced over at him. "Hear what?"
Suddenly the noise was all around them. Familiar noise,
erupting from the stereo speakers flanking both ends of the
kitchen. Electric guitar, drums, organ, synthesizer. Someone
had the camp-wide system going on maximum volume.
The same thunder swamped the rec room. Macready and
Garry stared dumbly at the three speakers fastened to the
walls. The pilot shouted at his companion. Garry's lips
moved, but all Macready could hear was amplified
electronics.
Neither man could hear the other . . .
 The music filled the corridors, the empty sleeping rooms,
the supply section, and the lavatories. It penetrated the
walls and shook the floors.
Except for Childs, who had maintained it, Nauls knew that
system better than anyone at the outpost. He shouted over
the din and gestured back toward the rec room.
"It's got into the pub!" he screamed at his companion.
"It's turned on the stereo!"
Sanders gaped across the room at him, straining to hear.
"What say?"
Nauls headed for him. "It's between us and the rec room.
How are we going to get back?"
Sanders shook his head, looked frightened and confused.
"Can't hear you, man!"
In the recreation room Macready cursed steadily as he
ripped first one speaker and then another from their wall
brackets.
"What are they doing back there?" he asked the station
manager, nodding toward the distant kitchen. The music
boomed from only one remaining speaker now, but its
pounding ostinato continued to reverberate through the rest
of the compound.
Garry stood close by the wire entrance and peered down
the hallway. Nauls's voice reached him as a distorted wail.
"What's he saying?" Macready asked as he tore at the last
speaker.
Garry shook his head. "I can't make it out."
"What's that?"
"Macready!" Nauls was howling. "We been cut off!" He
leaned cautiously into the corridor. "Hey, can't you guys
hear me up there?"
 Something went whump! against the door at the back of
the kitchen. Nauls turned to stare as a large, scythe-like
blade poked through the heavy timbers and began sawing
downward. Black ooze stained the fringes of the cut. The
blade itself was an unrecognizable shade of nonmetallic red.
Odd color for a knife. The sound of tearing wood was largely
obscured by the blare from the stereo speakers.
Eyes bulging, Sanders pointed a trembling hand at the
disintegrating door. A second knife-blade appeared
alongside the first, together with more of the lubricating
black substance.
Nauls backed away from the splintering barrier as he
realized that the dual blades were not knives. They were
fingernails.
Sanders had put his back against the third doorway when
another pair of talons came crashing through the thinner
wood to spread and lock around his neck. He struggled
briefly as he was yanked backward. There was a wistful
expression on his face as his bit down on the cyanide
capsule just before he was wrenched through the broken
door,
Nauls wasn't one for futile gestures. Sanders had bought
it. The other door was giving way as he took off through the
single remaining exit. Crouching low, he shot out into the
corridor. His skates sent sparks flying.
In the recreation room a familiar and nerve-tingling
screech rose above the music. It was sharp, distinct, louder
than ever.
Macready bent under the wire and looked down the hall.
There was no movement. Small speakers continued to
bellow their indifferent electronic litany from far rooms.
Nauls had skated like this only once before in his life. It
had been back in Chicago. The local gang, the Crips, were
after him. The mothers were fast, but not as fast as a
frightened teenager on skates. It was late, he had no
business being out in that neighborhood, and cockiness had
overcome common sense.
He'd gone shooting right past their street corner, leaving
them furious and startled in his wake, and he'd skated until
he'd thought his legs were going to drop off. Around fences,
down deserted streets, leaping curbs and gutters, flying
through the vacant urban night.
Now he leaned hard into a turn and kicked with his legs
as he accelerated down a straight corridor. Not far, he told
himself desperately, not far to home. To Delancy Street, to
the rec room. His eyes were glazed. He was a bullet,
spinning down the barrel of a gun.
Sanders's body came flying out of the hallway wall
directly ahead of him. A thick, knob-encrusted arm pinned it
like a fly to the paneling opposite.
Nauls skidded and lost his balance as he tried to stop,
slid into the nearest wall hard. The cyanide capsule went
flying out of his mouth. He ignored it. The rest of whatever
had taken the radio operator was starting to crumble
through the wall.
He got to his feet and started forward again, leaping over
the flexing, massive limb and rolled on the floor just like
they'd taught him to do in gym class. Then he was back on
his feet and skating like a roller derby jammer for the next
turn.
Macready was out in the corridor and running toward the
kitchen. He hadn't gotten very far when Nauls came
careening around the corner toward him.
"Get back!" the cook screamed at him. Macready slowed
but didn't stop.
"The generator . . ." he started to say.
"Screw the generator!" Nauls shot past the pilot's
reaching hand. Hisses and unholy snarls rose above the
music. Something like an ambling earthquake was coming
up the corridor. Macready turned and rushed after Nauls.
 Nauls barely remembered the wire and just did duck
under it as he skidded into the rec room. Macready was right
behind him chugging like an overheated engine, the cook
collapsed on the big couch.
"What happened back there?" Garry asked him quietly.
Nauls looked over at him. His words came in bunches.
"Got Sanders . . . he got into his capsule, the poor son bitch .
. . World War Three wouldn't mess with this fucker . . . can go
through walls . . . and it's big, lots bigger than we thought . .
. maybe never reached full size before it froze way back
when . . . it's like all over the place . . ."
"Calm down and get into your position," Macready told
him.
Nauls started off the couch. "Position, my ass . . ."
Garry worked on the generators, readying them. "I'm
going to bump this up as much as I can. We'll have to risk a
burnout. It ought to do it."
"Boulder Damn might do it," was Nauls's opinion.
Unexpectedly, the loud music that had been blasting
through the compound ceased. Something had turned it off.
Or maybe the tape had run out.
Garry whispered to the pilot. "Lights."
Macready nodded and flipped the main wall switch. Each
man assumed his predetermined station as the rec room was
plunged into darkness. The wind moaned overhead.
Their attention was concentrated on the wired doorway,
though after Nauls's description of the way the thing had
assaulted the kitchen they didn't neglect to watch the two
blocked entrances or the walls.
They waited in the darkness for the thing to come to
them. Silence filled the compound.
When some time had gone by and nothing had
happened, Garry finally spoke. "How long's it been?"
Macready checked the faint glow of his watch. "Little over
two hours, I think."
 From behind him Nauls sounded hopeful. "Maybe it ain't
coming. Maybe it's going to try and wait us out, like you said
earlier. With the generator still on, the rest of the camp'll
stay pretty warm."
"Then we have to go after it," Macready told him.
"Bet that's the last place you ever go."
"Shusshhh!" Garry quieted them. "Listen."
In the eerie silence they clearly heard the sound of a far-
off door opening, then closing. The action was repeated. It
was still far away and accompanied by a rustling noise.
Macready and Nauls moved a little farther apart.
A soft bubbling came from outside. It was followed by a
tentative scratching at the door. Garry's fingers tightened on
the generator controls. The scratching intensified, then grew
louder. Macready's voice was a strained whisper.
"Wait. Wait until it gets through the door." Garry nodded,
his palms damp on the main switch.
The scratching had risen to a steady, insistent pounding.
The door was heavier than most in the compound. Nauls and
Macready quietly lit a pair of Molotovs and concentrated on
the entrance.
The door boomed hollowly as something massive threw
its weight against it. The room began to shake. Dirt fell from
cracks in the quivering ceiling. Macready raised his arm and
aimed the slowly flickering Molotov.
Then the roof gave way and it dropped into their midst.
Instinctively the three stunned men threw themselves away
from the dark mass occupying the middle of the room. As he
stumbled backward Macready heaved his Molotov and from
the other side of the room Nauls did the same.
Both struck close to the thing's right side. For an instant
they could see it clearly: a raging, constantly shifting
gelatinous form silhouetted by the flames.
Garry bolted for the door. As he jumped something
erupted from the center of the humping mound and speared
him. The unaffected two-thirds of the enormous body
followed its probing tongue or tentacle or whatever it was
and engulfed the hapless station manager before he could
get the door open.
A chitinous limb lashed out and sent Nauls sprawling.
Macready dodged its mate, dove at the generator and threw
the switch.
Current ripped through the wired doorway, electrocuting
Garry with merciful speed. One of the thing's talons, caught
in the door where it had pinned him, twisted away from the
crackling pain. The door came away from its hinges and the
pinioned talon began pounding it against the floor, trying to
shake it loose.
Nauls scrambled frantically through the gap where the
door had been. But the seething, screeching horror was
between Macready and the exit. Macready's brain screamed
at him to do something. The capsule lay against his right
cheek. The other two doors were heavily barricaded from the
inside, too heavily for him to free one in time.
The window . . .
He jumped for it and yanked down convulsively on the
emergency fire lever. It was tight from lack of use. He put all
his weight into a second try and stepped aside as the heavy
triple-paned glass tumbled into the room. Something struck
his boot a glancing blow as he scrambled out into the storm.
Battered and bloodied, dragging one leg, Nauls crawled
along the corridor. Not only his leg but his mind must be
damaged, because he was sure he could hear the sound of a
revving motor. It must be the regular shuttle flight, come to
carry them away to safety, away from the repellent alien
monstrosity that would tear the compound apart in its
search for the last humans it could take over.
But the plane wasn't due for months. It only came in
winter on rare clear days and anyone could hear the storm
howling outside, howling and screeching and wailing,
coming closer and closer.
 Terror made him crawl faster, oblivious to the pain in his
broken leg. He didn't know that it was broken, only that
when he tried to stand fire shot through it and brought him
down.
Bathroom stall, close by. He crawled in and locked it. The
gurgling that had been pursuing him grew louder. Nauls
leaned against the back of the toilet, looking around
desperately. He was imprisoned in a tiny wooden box, no
windows, only the thin slatted ventilator. A nice little box, all
wrapped up for Christmas dinner, a skinny little turkey
waiting for big daddy to start carving him up . . .
The gurgling stopped somewhere on the other side of the
door. There came a scratching at the wood. A low moan rose
from the depths of Nauls's throat, a sound he couldn't and
didn't try to control. He began ripping at the weathered
wood forming the back of the stall. Blood started from
beneath his nails as he clawed at the reluctant paneling.
A powerful blow struck the door as he wrenched aside
one plank. It came away in pieces. Something dark was
starting to come through the wood.
Nauls put the jagged end of a large splinter to his throat
and gave it a spasmodic shove . . .
The sound of the motor was loud in the deserted lab. One
moment the walls stood firm and the next moment they
seemed to explode as the tractor barreled through the wall,
its huge shovel tearing half the room to shreds. Glass and
wood shattered against each other. The refrigerator and its
incriminating load of frozen blood went over on its side like
a toy.
Macready was in the driver's seat, his eyes wild, his
expression like those usually seen on the faces of inmates in
mental institutions. He's made a run for Supply, gone in
through the broken window there and gathered up the box
of plugs and the breather spring that had been removed
from the tractor's engine. Instinct and luck had directed him
through the storm to the maintenance shed.
 Frostbite formed black warpaint on his exposed cheeks
and fingertips. A stick of dynamite was a red slash between
his lips. On the seat next to him rode a pair of large metal
cylinders marked "HYDROGEN." There were no weather
balloons left for them to send soaring into the Antarctic sky.
Macready had a different destiny in mind for them.
He let the tractor grind to a halt. Snow swirled around
him as he took the stick of dynamite from his lips. He was
smiling and no more than half crazy.
"Okay, creep," he shouted toward the interior of the
compound, "It's just you and me now! Be on your toes, if you
got any. We're going to do a little remodeling. Time to let a
little fresh air inside. You like the air around this country,
don't you?"
He settled back into the driver's seat and gunned the
engine, sending the huge machine ripping through the next
wall and into the infirmary. Medical equipment and supplies
went flying. The operating table got thrown into the far wall.
The big tractor had been designed to move tons of solid
ice and rock. The prefabricated walls crumpled like tinfoil
under its heavy treads.
The mess hall was next; tables, chairs, and now-silent
speakers splintered beneath the relentless shovel.
Macready's voice lifted above the wind. He was singing a
ribald Mexican folk tune as he demolished the camp, but his
eyes searched every corner and missed nothing.
On through the kitchen. Gas hissed from a broken pipe,
the stink of propane momentarily tainting the air before the
wind whisked it away. The demented troubador in the
driver's seat sang on.
A taloned arm slunk around a corner, for the first time
moving away from a human voice instead of toward it.
Macready's voice echoed down the hall.
"Chime in if you know the words, old boy. You'd like
Mexico. Nice and warm there. No ice to lock you up for a few
millenia. You'd like to get there, wouldn't you? Like to hop
into my bod and go lie on the beach and pick out a few
señoritas to take over? Too bad you'll never get there."
Several more rooms were destroyed before he reached
the pub area. He halted the tractor's headlong plunge and
backed it up a few yards.
"Medical stopover," he announced to the storm, still
whistling his cheery tune into the wind. Somehow a bottle of
Jim Beam had survived the chaos unscathed.
"You like whiskey?" he shouted toward the intact
remnants of the compound as he pulled the stopper. "Come
on, join me for a drink. Be good for you. Put fangs on your
chest." He swallowed a substantial slug, felt fire slide down
his throat and pool up in his belly. It felt wonderful.
The tractor rammed into the rec room. The engine started
to grind. A few intermittent chugs brought it to a halt
beneath the hole in the ceiling created by the thing's earlier,
unanticipated method of entrance.
"Damn it," the pilot muttered, the smile still on his face,
"ran out of gas. Oh well, hi ho, time for a stroll."
As he fiddled absently with the hydrogen tanks his eyes
searched the gap overhead, the remaining doorways, the
accumulated rubble. Wind-borne ice particles stung his face
and hands.
He checked them. The fingertips were as black as if he'd
been carrying charcoal, and he winced. Not from any pain:
they were too numb for that, but from the knowledge of
what might happen to them.
Then he sat back and laughed. Here he was sitting and
worrying about his fingertips, like some damn beauty queen.
His gaze roved unceasingly over the ruins
"Sweetheart, it's going to get mighty cold here pretty
soon. You better make your move before I die on you, too.
Then you'll really be stuck. I mean, I'm only one person, and
everybody knows Americans taste better than Norwegians
anyway, right?" He upended the bottle and took another
swig, keeping his eyes busy. The tractor's headlights still
burned, illuminating the wreckage.
"I know you're bugged because we ruined your trip,
right? Spiffy little toy you had there. No room for a
stewardess, though, and the legroom definitely wasn't first
class."
A slight tremor rocked the tractor and he went quiet,
listening. He glanced toward the hole in the roof, then
around the devastated rec room. Pulling his butane lighter
from a pocket he flicked it alight and cupped the flame near
the short wick protruding from the single stick of dynamite.
"But your real hang-up," he continued, fighting to keep
his voice casual, "is your looks."
The tremor was repeated, slightly stronger this time.
Something was pounding away in the darkness, a steady,
regular sound that seemed to come from everywhere around
him. It took him a moment to realize it was his own heart.
"Atta boy," he murmured encouragingly "I know you're
around. Here's papa. Y'all come visit."
The floor shook slightly beneath the tractor. He stood,
searching the dark areas as well as those lit by the
machine's headlights. "Come on. Come shake hands,
sucker," he whispered tensely.
The tractor rose several inches. Macready lost his balance
and tumbled forward, arms windmilling. He found himself
staring into the engine at something that might have been a
face.
A claw flashed up at him, splitting the steering wheel but
missing his face as he threw himself backward.
He kicked at the accelerator and the tractor bounded ten
feet. As it rumbled past the gap in the ceiling he jumped
and grabbed the edge of the hole.
Ahead of him the thing's face and arms burst through the
metal plating of the engine housing. Reaching claws just
missed his legs as he scrambled onto the roof. A frustrated
hiss echoed through the room below.
 Macready steadied himself on the quivering roof. It
threatened to collapse any second. He lit the short fuse on
the dynamite and tossed it toward the tractor cab.
Half the thing's grotesque body emerged from the
opening behind Macready, screeching in fury. Something
flexible and tough as a rubber hose whipped out and
wrapped itself twice around the pilot's chest, tightening and
yanking him backward.
At that instant there was an immense explosion, the
leaking hydrogen tanks igniting and sending a white fireball
fifty feet into the night sky. Mixed in with the flames were
the carbonizing remnants of the thing's body.
The force of the blast smacked Macready from behind and
shoved him off the roof. He crashed into the snow below. The
severed and now lifeless limb was still wrapped around him,
burning along with the back of his jacket. He tore off the
limb and flung it aside, then rolled over and over in the snow
until the last of the flames eating at his back were
smothered . . .
There wasn't much left of the camp. Half of it was a
blackened, smoking ruin and the rest a garbage heap,
thanks to Macready's manipulation of the bulldozer. The
storm had settled considerably. Still-burning fires
illuminated the ruins and the southern lights danced
overhead.
Macready stumbled through the devastation, several
thick blankets wrapped around him. Whether the spare
parkas had gone up in flames or lay buried beneath the
rubble or were simply lying around somewhere waiting to be
found he didn't yet know. But the multiple layers of blanket
kept the wind off and much of the cold away from his
abused body.
Pain bent him double. It was hard to limp from one hot
spot to the next and wield the fire extinguisher with much
accuracy. He mumbled something, though there was no one
to hear him, finally gave up and flung the inadequate
extinguisher aside. It clanged off something unyielding and
metallic: the twisted bulk of Nauls's stove.
The pub area was largely untouched by the fires, a kind
providence having apparently decided that now that he'd
disposed of the thing's final manifestation be could stay
comfortably drunk for the rest of the night. He smiled thinly.
He was looking forward to a five-month binge.
He leaned against the handmade bar and lit a cigar from
the pub's undamaged stock. His hands were heavily
wrapped. No gloves were lying conveniently about, but
there'd been plenty of insulated tape in the ruins of the
infirmary. What was left of his hands benefited from the
bandaging anyway. He puffed on the cigar and poured a
double, no soda please, into a glass that was only slightly
chipped.
Something grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him
around. He was too exhausted to scream.
A face stared back into his own: Childs. White-and-black
blotches mottled the exposed skin and icicles decorated the
mechanic's woolly beard.
"Did . . . did you kill it? I heard an explosion." Childs's
mouth wasn't working too well. His lips were cracked and
stained with dried blood. A weak gust of wind caused the
powerful frame to stagger. Lack of food and exposure to the
elements had severely depleted the mechanic's strength.
"I think so," Macready told him
"What do you mean, 'you think so'?" Childs stumbled
backward a few steps.
They eyed each other suspiciously, the voices guarded.
Macready was suddenly alert.
"Yeah, I got it." He gestured with a mummified finger at
the mechanic's face. "Pretty mean frostbite."
Childs kept his distance and exhibited a puffy, pale hand.
"It'll turn again soon enough. Then I guess I'll be losing
the whole thing." He kicked out first his right foot, then the
left. The movements were feeble, shaky. "Think my toes are
already gone."
Macready had salvaged one of the card tables and set it
up nearby. Carrying bottle and glass he limped over and sat
down in the single chair. The back was cracked but the legs
were still intact.
A chess set rested on the table, its power wire hanging
loosely over the side. By some miracle the box of pieces that
had been buried beneath it had survived the cataclysm.
Several piles of cards lay nearby. Macready was in the
process of combining them to form a single, complete deck.
The two men continued to eye each other warily. "So
you're the only one who made it," said Childs.
Macready was setting up the chessboard. Tiny magnets
held each piece to the metal board despite the steady wind.
"Not the only one, it looks like."
Childs found a couple of blankets and gratefully wrapped
them around his upper body. "The fire's got the temperature
way up all over camp. Won't last long, though." He nodded
toward the pub's missing wall.
"Neither will we."
"Maybe we should try and fix one of the radios. Try and
get some help."
"Maybe we shouldn't."
"Then we'll never make it," the mechanic said calmly.
Macready puffed on the cigar until the tip glowed red,
then reached down into the bundle of supplies he'd
gathered. From the middle of the pile he pulled a small,
cylindrical metal shape.
"Lookee what I found. This one works." He carefully put
the blowtorch on the table next to him.
"Maybe we shouldn't make it," he added speculatively.
Childs eyed the blowtorch. "If you're worried about
anything, let's take that blood test of yours."
"If we've got any surprises for each other," the pilot
replied, "we wouldn't be in any condition to do anything
about it. Any testing can wait." He paused, then ask
cheerfully, "You don't play chess?"
Childs studied the pilot, then hunted through the
wreckage outside the pub. He returned carrying a second
chair in reasonably good condition and placed it across the
table from Macready.
"I guess I'll be learning."
The pilot grinned and handed the mechanic the bottle.
Childs leaned back and drained half of what was left. When
he put the bottle down he was smiling.
Around them the persistent fires smoldered on, riding a
sea of frozen water. Bright embers levitated by the wind rose
lazily into the night sky The ghostly ribbon of the southern
aurora pirouetted overhead, masking many of the stars that
had come out in the wake of the storm.
Macready nudged a pawn two squares forward . . .
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALAN DEAN FOSTER, a Scorpio, was born in California where

he completed his schooling. After serving a hitch in the U.S.
Army, he worked as a copywriter in a public relations-
advertising firm. Since then he has taught Motion Picture
History and Writing at Los Angeles City College, as well as
Literature at U.C.L.A.
A prolific writer, Foster has written very successful
novelizations of Alien, Dark Star, The Black Hole, Outland
and Clash of the Titans. He has also had ten novels
published including the five Humanx Commonwealth
volumes, Midworld, Cachalot, Icerigger, Mission to Moulokin
and his most recent one, Spellsinger.
A red belt in Tang Soo Do (a form of Korean Karate),
Foster's hobbies are backpacking, body surfing and
basketball. He and his wife recently deserted the Pacific
Coast to live in the Arizona desert.