Then the odor of the place and its closeness and the harshness of the bright lights shattered off the walls, swept away the sense of other time and place and he rose to his feet again and swung about, uncertainly. The tunnel was clear ahead, but far behind there were creatures running and the air was clogged and murky with the fragmented, but massive mind-waves that came from all directions.
—Changer!
—The stairs, Quester. Get going for those stairs.
—Stairs?
—The door. The closed opening. The one with the sign above it. The little square with the red characters enclosed.
—I see it. But the door is solid.
—Push it. It will open. Use your arms and not your body. Please, remember. Use your arms. You use them so seldom that you forget you have them.
Quester leaped toward the door.
—Your arms, you fool! Your arms!
Quester struck it with his body. It yielded on one side and he slipped quickly through. He was in a cubicle and in the floor of the cubicle was a path of narrow ledges that went downward. Those would be the stairs, he told himself.
He went down them, cautiously at first, then faster as he caught the knack. He came to another cubicle and across the short space of the floor, other stairs led downward.
—Changer?
—Go down them. Go down three sets of them. Then go out the door. It leads into a room, a large room. There’ll be many creatures there. Go straight ahead until you reach a large opening to your left. Go out that opening and you will be outdoors.
—Outdoors?
—On the surface of the planet. Outside the building (the cave) that we are in. They have caves on top of the ground here.
—Then what?
—Then run!
—Changer, why don’t you take over? You can handle it. You are like these creatures. You can just walk out.
—I can’t. I haven’t any clothes.
—The coverings? The artificial skins?
—That’s right.
—But that is silly. Clothes …
—No one stirs anywhere without them. It is the custom.
—And you are bound by custom?
—Look, you’ll take the creatures by surprise. For a moment they’ll be frozen at the sight of you. Just staring, not doing anything. You resemble a wolf and …
—You said that before. I do not like the thought. There is something dirty …
—A creature now extinct. A fearsome creature that struck terror into the hearts of people. They’ll be frightened when they see you.
—O.K., O.K., O.K. Thinker, how about it?
—You two go ahead, said Thinker. I have no data. I cannot be of help. We must rely on Changer. This is his planet and he knows it.
—All right, then. Here I go.
Quester went padding swiftly down the stairs. The thick, metallic sense of fear lay everywhere. The mind-waves pounded on relentlessly.
If we get out of this, thought Quester, if we get out of this …
He felt his own fear creeping in upon him, the descending weight of uncertainty and doubt.
—Changer?
—Go ahead. You’re doing fine.
He went down the third flight and faced the door.
—This one?
—Yes, and be fast about it. Your arms this time, remember. Your body bumping the door might not open it wide enough. It could fall back and catch you.
Quester squared off, extruding his arms. He bunched his body and flung himself at the door.
—Changer, to the left? The opening on the left?
—Yes. About ten of your body lengths.
Quester’s outstretched arms struck the door and slapped it open. His body catapulted out into the room. He had a confused sense of startled screaming, of open mouths, of creatures moving swiftly and there was the opening to his left. He pivoted and plunged toward it. A pack of creatures, he saw, were coming toward the opening from the outside—more of the strange creatures who peopled this planet, but draped in different kinds of artificial skins. They opened their mouths to shriek at him and lifted their hands, which held black objects which belched sudden flashes of fire, emitting bitter stenches.
Something smashed into metal very close to him and made a hollow whining sound and something else chewed with a crunching sound into a piece of wood. Then Quester, unable to stop even if he had wished, was among the creatures and the old war-cry was thundering through his body, his head jerking and slashing, his hands striking out. In among them for an instant, then through them and away, streaking along the front of the great cave which reared into the sky.
From behind him came sharp reports and some small, but heavy objects which traveled very fast gouged into the floor on which he ran, throwing up fragments of the material of which the floor was made.
It might be night, he thought, for there was no great star in the sky, although there were many distant stars shining in the sky and that was well, he thought, for it was unthinkable for a planet not to carry with it a canopy of stars.
And there were smells, but now the smells were different, not as acrid, not as sharp or harsh as had been in the building, but more pleasant, gentle smells.
Behind him the popping sound continued and tiny things went past him, then he was at the corner of the cave that went up into the sky, and around the corner, still running, remembering that Changer had said that he must run. And enjoying the running, the smooth, sleek slide of muscles, the feeling of the floor on which he ran, solid underneath his pads.
Now, for the first time since it all had started, he had the chance to gather in the aspects of the planet and it seemed, in many ways, a very busy place. And in other ways very strange, indeed. For who had ever heard of a planet that was floored? The floor ran out from the edge of the cave that reared up into the sky—out into the distance as far as he could see. And everywhere he looked there were other caves, stretching upward from the surface, many of them shining with yellow squares of light, and in front of many of them, and in little areas fenced in on the floor were metallic or stony representations of the planet’s residents. And why, Quester wondered, should things like this exist? Could it be, he wondered, that when these creatures died, they were turned to metal or to stone and left standing wherever they had died? Although that did not seem reasonable, for many of the creatures turned to stone or metal seemed larger than life size. But it was entirely possible, of course, that the creatures came in many different sizes and perhaps only the larger ones were metamorphosed into stone or metal.
There were not many of the planet’s living residents in evidence, and all those a distance off. But moving on the surface of the floor, and very rapidly, were metallic shapes that had glowing eyes on the front of them and that made a whooshing sound and sent out a blast of air as they streaked along. From these metallic shapes came brainwaves, the sense of a living thing, but a living thing that in many cases had more brains than one—and the brain-waves were quiet and gentle, not loaded with the hate and fear that he had sensed back there in the cave.
It was strange, of course, but Quester told himself, it would be unusual if one met only one kind of life upon a planet. So far there had been the things that walked on two hind legs and were protoplasmic, and the metallic things that moved very rapidly and purposefully and shot light from their eyes and had more brains than one. And there had been that other time, he recalled, on that wet, hot night when he had sensed many other forms of life that seemed to hold either poor intelligence or no intelligence, beings that were little more than bundles of matter which held the gift of life.
If only, he thought, this planet were not so hot and its, atmosphere not so heavy and oppressive, it might prove very interesting. Although it all was most confusing.
—Quester.
—What is it, Changer?
—Off to your right. The trees. The large vegetation. You can see them against the sky. Head for them. If we can get in among them, they will hel
p to hide us.
—Changer, asked Thinker, what do we do now?
—I don’t know. We’ll have to think about it. All three of us together.
—These creatures will be hunting us?
—I presume they will.
—We should be one mind. Quester and I should know everything you know.
—We will, said Quester. There has been no time. There has been too much happening. The distractions have been great.
—Reach the trees, said Changer, and we’ll have the time.
Quester swerved away from the side of the mighty cave that rose into the sky, cutting out across the wide strip of flooring, heading for the trees. Charging out of the darkness, its two eyes gleaming hard, came one of the metallic creatures, with the soft sighing of its windstorm. It swerved and headed straight for him and Quester flattened out. His legs blurred and his body hugged the gleaming surface of the floor, his ears laid back, his tail pointed straight behind him.
Changer cheered him on.
—Run, you mangy wolf! Run, you haggard jackal! Run, you frantic fox!
15
The chief of staff was a calm and officious man. He was not the kind of man one would expect to bang his fist upon a desk.
But now he banged his fist.
“What I want to know,” he bellowed, “is what stupid knothead phoned the police. We could have handled this ourselves. We needed no police.”
“I would imagine, sir,” said Michael Daniels, “that whoever might have called them thought they had some reason to. The corridor was littered with people all chewed up.”
“We could have taken care of them,” said the chief of staff. “That is the business we are in. We could have taken care of them and then proceeded in a fashion far more orderly.”
“You must realize, sir,” said Gordon Barnes, “that everyone must have been upset. A wolf in the …”
The chief of staff waved Barnes to silence, spoke to the nurse.
“Miss Gregerson, you were the first to see this thing.”
The girl still was pale and frightened, but she nodded. “I came out of a room and it was in the corridor. A wolf. I dropped my tray and screamed and ran. It was a frightening …”
“You’re sure it was a wolf?”
“Yes, sir, I am sure.”
“How could you be sure. It might have been a dog.”
“Dr. Winston,” Daniels said, “you’re trying to confuse the issue. It makes no difference whether it was a wolf or dog.”
The chief of staff glared at him angrily, then made an impatient gesture.
“All right,” he said. “All right. The rest of you may leave. If you’d be so good as to stay, Dr. Daniels, I would like to talk with you.”
The two waited and the others filed out.
“Now, Mike,” said the chief of staff, “let the two of us sit down and make some sense of it. Blake was your patient, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, he was. You’re acquainted with him, doctor. The man who was found in space. Frozen and encapsulated.”
“Yes, I know,” said Winston. “What did he have to do with this?”
“I’m not sure,” said Daniels. “I’d suspect he was the wolf.”
Winston made a face. “Come now,” he said. “You can’t expect me to believe a thing like that. What you are saying is Blake most likely was a werewolf.”
“Did you read this evening’s papers?”
“No, I can’t say I have. What would the papers have to do with what happened here?”
“Nothing, perhaps, but I’m inclined to think …”
Daniels stopped what he had meant to say. Good God, he told himself, it is too fantastic. It simply couldn’t happen. Although it was the one thing which might explain what had happened up on the third floor an hour or so ago.
“Doctor Daniels, what are you inclined to think? If you have some information, please come forth with it. You realize, of course, what this means to us. Publicity—too much publicity and the wrong kind of it entirely. Sensationalism, and a hospital can’t afford sensationalism. I hate to think what, even now, the papers and dimensino may be doing with it. And there’ll be a police inquiry. Already they’re snooping around the place, talking to people they have no right to talk with and asking questions that should not be asked. And investigations of all sorts. Congressional hearings maybe. Space Administration will be down our throat, wanting to know what happened to Blake, to this prize pet of theirs. And I can’t tell them, Daniels, that he turned into a wolf.”
“Not a wolf, sir. But an alien creature. One that looks remarkably like a wolf. You’ll recall the police claimed it was a wolf with arms sprouting from its shoulders.”
The chief of staff growled. “No one else said that. The police were panicked. Shooting straight into the lobby. One bullet missed the receptionist by no more than inches. Crashed into the paneling just above her head. They were frightened men, I tell you. They don’t know what they saw. What was this you were saying about an alien creature?”
Daniels drew in a deep breath and took the plunge. “A witness by the name of Lukas testified this afternoon at the bioengineering hearing. He’d dug up some old record about two simulated men being processed a couple of centuries ago. Claimed he found the records in the Space Administration files …”
“Why those files? Why should a record of that sort …”
“Wait,” said Daniels. “You haven’t heard the half of it. These were open-ended androids …”
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Winston. He stared glassily at Daniels. “The old werewolf principle! An organism that could change, that could be anything at all. There is that old myth …”
“Apparently it wasn’t a myth,” said Daniels, grimly. “Two of the androids were synthesized and sent out on survey and exploration ships.”
“And you think Blake is one of them?”
“That’s the thought I had. Lukas testified this afternoon that the two went out. The records then are silent. No mention of their coming back.”
“It just doesn’t make good sense,” protested Winston. “Good Lord, man, two hundred years ago. If they made androids then, good, serviceable androids, we’d be swarming with them now. You just don’t make two of anything and then drop the entire project.”
“You would,” said Daniels, “if those two didn’t work. Let’s say, just for argument, that not only the androids failed to return, but likewise the ships that they were on. That they just blasted off into nothingness and there was no further word of them. Not only would no more of the androids be made, but the record of the failure would be buried deep inside the files. It wouldn’t be anything that Space Administration would want someone digging out.”
“But they couldn’t know the androids had anything to do with the disappearance of the ships. In the old days, and even now, there are ships that don’t come back.”
Daniels shook his head. “One ship maybe. Anything could happen to a single ship. But two ships with one thing in common, each ship with an android aboard—then it wouldn’t take anyone long to figure the android might have been the reason. Or that the android set up a certain circumstance …”
“I don’t like it,” complained the chief of staff. “I don’t like the smell of it. I don’t want to get tangled up with Space. They swing a lot of weight and they wouldn’t like it if we tried to pin it onto them. And anyhow, I don’t see how all this would tie up with Blake turning, as you seem to think, into a wolf.”
“I told you once before,” said Daniels. “Not a wolf. Into an alien that has the appearance of a wolf. Say the werewolf principle didn’t work the way it was thought it would. The android was intended to turn into an alien form, utilizing the data extracted from a captured alien and to live as that alien for a time. Then the alien data would be erased and the android would be a man again, ready to be changed into something else. But suppose …”
“I see,” said Winston. “Suppose it didn’t work. Suppose the alien data couldn’t
be erased. Suppose the android stayed both alien and human—two creatures and either one it wished.”
“That, sir,” said Daniels, “is what I had been thinking. And there is something else. We took an electroencephalogram of Blake and it showed up something strange. As if he had more minds than one. Like shadows of other minds showing in the tracings.”
“Shadows? You mean more than one extra mind?”
“I don’t know,” said Daniels. “The indications were not pronounced. Nothing that you could be sure of.”
Winston got up from behind the desk and paced up and down the floor.
“I hope you’re wrong,” he said. “I think you are. It’s crazy.”
“It’s one way,” Daniels told him, stubbornly, “that we can explain what happened.”
“But one thing we don’t explain. Blake was found frozen, in a capsule. No sign of the ship. No other debris. How do we figure that one out?”
“We don’t,” said Daniels. “There is no way that we can. We can’t know what happened. When you talk about debris, you are presuming the ship was destroyed and we don’t know if that happened. Even if it had been, over a couple of centuries the debris would have drifted apart. It might even have been in the vicinity of the capsule and not been seen. In space, visibility is poor. Unless something picks up light and reflects it, you wouldn’t know that it was there.”
“You think perhaps the crew got onto what had happened and grabbed Blake and froze him, then shot him out into space inside the capsule? One way of getting rid of him? An unmessy way to do it?”
“I wouldn’t know, sir. There is no way that we can know. All we can do is speculate and there are too many areas of speculation for us to be certain we have concentrated on the right one. If the crew did what you said, getting rid of Blake, then why didn’t the ship come back. You explain one thing and then you have another to explain and perhaps another and another. It would seem a hopeless task to me.”
Winston stopped his pacing, came back to the desk and sat down in the chair. He reached out his hand for the communicator.