The Thing (9 page)

"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.