The Thing (16 page)

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.