The Thing (6 page)

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?"

"
Any
body. 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.