Controlled mutation? Now that was something different. That was the thing the government had in mind when it sent the commission here to Pluto, taking advantage of the cold conditions to develop hormones that might mutate the race. Hormones that might make a better race, that might develop latent talents or even add entirely new characteristics calculated to bring out the best that was in humanity.
Controlled mutations, those were all right. It was only the wild mutations that the government would fear.
What if the members of the commission had developed a hormone and tried it on themselves?
His thought stopped short, pleased with the idea, with the possible solution.
Upon the bedpost the little monstrosity fingered its mouth, slobbering gleefully.
A knock came on the door.
“Come in,” called West.
The door opened and a man came in.
“I’m Belden,” said the man. “Jim Belden. They told me you were here.”
“I’m glad to know you, Belden.”
“What’s the game?” asked Belden.
“No game,” said West.
“You got those two downstairs sold on you,” Belden said. “They think you’re another great mind that has discovered the outside.”
“So they do,” said West. “I’m very glad to know it.”
“They pointed out Annabelle to me,” said Belden. “Said that was proof you were one of us. But I recognized Annabelle. They didn’t, but I did. She’s the one that Darling took along. You got her from Darling.”
West stayed silent. There was no use in playing innocent with Belden, for Belden had guessed too close to the truth.
Belden lowered his voice. “You have the same hunch as I have. You figure Darling’s hormone is worth more than all this mummery going on downstairs. And you’re here to find it. I told Nevin that Darling’s hormone was the thing for us to find instead of messing around outside, but he didn’t think so. After we took Darling to the moon, Nevin smashed the ship’s controls. He was afraid I might get away, you see. He didn’t trust me and he couldn’t afford to let me get away.”
“I’ll trade with you,” West told him quietly.
“We’ll go to the moon in your ship and see Darling,” said Belden. “We’ll beat it out of him.”
West grinned wryly. “Darling’s dead,” he said.
“Did you search the hut?” asked Belden.
“Of course not. Why should I have searched it?”
“It’s there, then,” said Belden, grimly. “Hidden in the hut somewhere. I’ve turned this place upside down and I’m sure it isn’t here. Neither the formula nor the hormones themselves. Not unless Darling was trickier than I thought he was.”
“You know what this hormone is,” said West smoothly, trying to make it sound as if he himself might know it.
“No,” said Belden shortly. “Darling didn’t trust us. He was angry at what Nevin was trying to do. And once he made a crack that the man who had it could rule the Solar System. Darling wasn’t kidding, West. He knew more about hormones than all the rest of us put together.”
“Seems to me,” West said drily, “that you would have wanted to keep a man like that here. You certainly could have used him.”
“Nevin again,” Belden told him. “Darling wouldn’t go along with the program that Nevin planned. Even threatened to expose him if he ever had the chance. Nevin wanted to kill him, but Cartwright thought up a joke … he’s jovial, Cartwright is.”
“I’ve noticed that,” said West.
“Cartwright thought up the exile business,” Belden said. “Offered Darling any one thing he wished to take along. One thing, you understand. Just one thing. That’s where the joke came in. Cartwright expected Darling to go through agonies trying to make up his mind. But there wasn’t a moment’s hesitation. Darling took the whisky.”
“He drank himself to death,” said West.
“Darling wasn’t a drinking man,” Belden told him, sharply.
“It was suicide,” said West. “Darling took you fellows down the line, neatly, all the way. He was away ahead of you.”
A soft sound like the brushing of a bird’s wing swung West around.
Rosie was coming through the door, her wings half-raised, exposing the hideousness of the furry, splotched body beneath the furry, death’s-head face.
“No!” screamed Belden. “No! I wasn’t going to do anything. I wasn’t—”
He backed away, arms outthrust to ward off the thing that walked toward him, mouth still working, but no sound coming out.
Rosie brushed West to one side with a flip of a furry wing and then the wings spread wider and shielded Belden from West’s view. The wings clapped shut and from behind them came the muffled scream of the man. Then nothing; silence.
West’s hand dropped to the holster and his gun came sliding out. His thumb slammed down the activator and the gun purred like a well-contented cat.
The ermine of Rosie’s wings turned black and she crumpled to the floor. A sickening odor filled the room.
“Belden!” cried West. He leaped forward, kicked the charred Rosie to one side. Belden lay on the floor and West turned away retching.
For a moment West stood in indecision, then swiftly he knew what he must do.
Showdown. He had hoped that it could be put off a little longer, until he knew a little more, but the incident of Belden and Rosie had settled it. There was nothing else to do.
He strode through the door and down the winding staircase toward the darkened room below.
The painting, he saw, was lighted … lighted as if from within itself. As if the source of light lay within the painting, as if some other sun shone upon the landscape that lay upon the canvas. The picture was lighted, but the rest of the room was dark and the light did not come out of the painting, but stayed there, imprisoned in the canvas.
Something scuttled between West’s feet and scuttered down the stairs. It squeaked and its claws beat a tattoo on the steps.
As West reached the bottom of the stairway a voice came out of the darkness.
“Are you looking for something, Mr. West?”
“Yes, Cartwright,” said West. “I am looking for you.”
“You must not be too concerned with what Rosie did,” Cartwright said. “Don’t let it upset you. Belden had it coming to him for a long time. He was scarcely one of us, really, never one of us. He pretended to go along with us because it was the only way that he could save his life. And life is such a small thing to consider. Don’t you think so, Mr. West?”
CHAPTER FOUR
The Last Man
West stood silently at the bottom of the stairs. The room was too dark to see anything, but the voice was coming from somewhere near the table’s end, close to the lighted painting.
I may have to kill him, West was thinking, and I must know where he is. For the first shot has to do it, there’ll be no time for a second.
“Rosie had no mind,” the voice said out in the darkness. “That is, no mind to speak of. But she was telepathic. Her brain picked up thoughts and passed them on. And she could obey simple commands. Very simple commands. And killing a man is so simple, Mr. West.”
“Rosie stood here beside me and I knew every word that you and Belden said. I did not blame you, West, for you had no way of knowing what you did. But I did blame Belden and I sent Rosie up to get him.
“There’s only one thing, West, that I hold against you. You should not have killed Rosie. That was a great mistake, West, a very great mistake.”
“It was no mistake,” said West. “I did it on purpose.”
“Take it easy, Mr. West,” said Cartwright. “Don’t do anything that might make me pull the trigger. Because I have a gun on you. Dead center on you, West, and I never miss.”
“I’ll give you odds
,” said West, “that I can get you before you can pull the trigger.”
“Now, Mr. West,” said Cartwright, “let’s not get hot-headed about this. Sure, you pulled a fast one on us. You tried to muscle in and you almost sold us, although eventually we would have tripped you up. And I admire your guts. Maybe we can work it out so no one will get killed.”
“Start talking,” West told him.
“It was too bad about Rosie,” said Cartwright, “and I really hold that against you, West, for we could have used Rosie to good advantage. But after all, the work is started on the other planets and we still have Stella. Our students are well grounded. … they can get along without instructions for a little while and maybe by the time we need to get in contact with them again we can find another one to replace our Rosie.”
“Quit wandering around,” said West. “Let’s hear what you have in mind.”
“Well,” said Cartwright, “we’re getting awfully short-handed. Belden’s dead and Darling’s dead and if Robertson isn’t dead by now he will be very shortly. For after he took Stella to Earth, he tried to desert, tried to run away. And that would never do, of course. He might tell folks about us and we can’t let anyone do that. For we are dead, you see. …”
He chuckled, the chuckle rolling through the darkness.
“It was a masterpiece, West, that broadcast. I was the last man alive and I told them what had happened. I told them the spacetime continuum had ruptured and things were coming through. And I gurgled. … I gurgled just before I died.”
“You didn’t really die, of course,” West said, innocently.
“Hell, no. But they think I did. And they still wake up screaming, thinking how I must have died.”
Ham, thought West. Pure, unadulterated ham. A jokester who would maroon a man to die on a lonely moon. A man who held a gun in his fist while he bragged about the things he’d done … about how he had outwitted Earth.
“You see,” said Cartwright, “I had to make them believe that it really happened. I had to make it so horrible that the government would never make it public, so horrible they’d close the planet with an iron-tight ban.”
“You had to be alone,” said West.
“That’s right, West. We had to be alone.”
“Well,” said West. “You’ve almost got it now. There’s only two of you alive.”
“The two of us,” Cartwright said, “and you.”
“You forget, Cartwright,” said West. “You’re going to kill me. You’ve got a gun pointed at me and you’re all set to pull the trigger.”
“Not necessarily,” said Cartwright. “We might make a deal.”
I’ve got him now, thought West. I know exactly where he is. I can’t see him, but I know where he is. And the pay-off is in a minute. It’ll be one of us or the other.
“You aren’t much use to us,” said Cartwright, “but we might need you later. You remember Langdon?”
“The one that got lost,” said West.
Cartwright chuckled. “That’s it, West. But he wasn’t lost. We gave him away. You see there was a—a—well, something, that could use him for a pet and so we made it a present of Langdon.”
He chuckled again. “Langdon didn’t like the idea too well, but what were we to do?”
“Cartwright,” West said, evenly, “I’m going for my gun.”
“What’s that—” said Cartwright, but the other words were blotted out by the hissing of his gun, firing even as he talked.
The beam hissed into the wall at the foot of the staircase, a spot that had been covered only a split second before by West’s head.
But West had dropped to a crouch almost as he spoke and now his own gun was in his fist, tilting up, solid in his hand. His thumb pressed the activator and then slid off.
Something dragged itself with heavy thumps across the floor and in the stillness between the bumps, West heard the rasp of heavy breaths.
“Damn you, West,” said Cartwright. “Damn you …”
“It’s an old trick, Cartwright,” said West, “that business of talking to a man just before you kill him. Throwing him off guard, practically ambushing him.”
Came a sound of cloth dragging over cloth, the whistling of painful breath, the thump of knees and elbows on the floor.
Then there was silence.
And a moment later something in some far corner squeaked and ran on pattering, rat-sounding feet. Then the silence again.
The rat-feet were still, but there was another sound, a faint shout as if someone far away were shouting … from somewhere outside the building, from somewhere outside … from outside.
West crouched close against the floor, huddling there, the muzzle of the gun resting on the carpet.
Outside … outside … outside …
The words hammered in his head.
Outside of what, he asked, but he knew the answer now. He knew where he had seen the picture of the thing that had slept in the chair and the other thing that squatted on the bedpost. And he knew the sound of chirping and of chittering and of running feet.
Outside … outside … outside …
Outside this world, of course.
He raised his head and looked at the painting, and the tree still glowed softly with its inner light, and from within it came a sound, a faint thudding sound, the sound of running feet.
The shout came again and the man was running down the path inside the painting. A man who ran and waved his arms and shouted.
The man was Nevin.
Nevin was in the painting, running down the path, his padding feet raising little puffs of dust along the pebbled path.
West raised the pistol and his hand was trembling so that the muzzle weaved back and forth and then described a circle.
“Buck fever,” said West.
He said it through chattering teeth.
For now he knew … now he knew the answer.
He put up his other hand and grasped the wrist of the hand that held the gun, and the muzzle steadied. West gritted his teeth together to stop their chattering.
His thumb went down against the activator and held it there and the flame from the gun’s muzzle spat out and mushroomed upon the painting. Mushroomed until the entire canvas was a maelstrom of blue brilliance that hissed and roared and licked with hungry tongues.
Slowly the tree ran together, as if one’s eyes might have blurred and gone slightly out of focus. The landscape dimmed and jigged and ran in little wavering lines. And through the wavering lines could be seen a twisted and distorted man whose mouth seemed open in a howl of rage. But there was no sound of howling, just the purring of the gun.
With a tired little puff the mushrooming brilliance and the painting were gone and the gun’s pencil of flame was hissing through an empty steel frame still filled with tiny glowing wires, spattering against the wall behind it.
West lifted his thumb and silence clamped down upon him, clamped down and held the room … as it held leagues of space stretching on all sides.
“No painting,” said West.
An echo seemed to run all around the room.
“No painting,” the echo said, but West knew it was no echo, just his brain clicking off endlessly the words his lips had said.
“No painting,” the echo said, but West knew it had been a machine that led to some other world, some other place, some otherwhere. A machine that broke down the spacetime continuum or whatever it was that separated Man’s universe from other, stranger universes.
No wonder the fruit upon the tree had looked like the fruit upon the table. No wonder he had thought that he heard the wind in the leaves.
West stood up and moved to the wall behind him. He found a tumbler and thumbed it up and the lights came on.
In the light the smashed other-world machine was a sagging piece of wreckage. Cartwr
ight’s body lay in the center of the room. A chittering thing ran across the floor and ducked into the dark beneath a table. A grinning face peeped out from behind a chair and squalled at West in cold-boned savagery.
And it was nothing new, for he had seen those faces before. Pictures of them in old books and in magazines that published tales of soul-shaking horror, tales of things that come from beyond, of entities that broke in from outside.
Just tales to send one shivering to bed. Just stories that should not be read at midnight. Stories that made one a little nervous when a tree squeaked in the wind outside the window or the rain walked along the shingles.
It had taken the wizardry of the Solar System’s best band of scientists to open the door that led into the world beyond.
And yet people in unknown, savage ages had talked of things like these … of goblin and incubus and imp. Perhaps men in Atlantis might have found the way, even as Nevin and Cartwright had found the way. In that long-gone day letting loose upon the world a flood of things that for ages after had lived in chimney-corner stories to chill one to the marrow.
And the pictures he had seen?
Ancestral memory, perhaps. Or a weird imaging that happened to be true. Or had the writers of those stories, the painters of those pictures …
West shuddered from the thought.
What was it Cartwright had said? The work is started on the other planets.
The work of passing along the knowledge, the principles, the psychology of the alien things of otherwhere. Education by remote control … involuntary education. Stella, the telepathic Stella, singing back on Earth, darling of the airways. And she was an agent for these things … she passed along the knowledge and a man would think it was his own.
That was it, of course, the thing that Nevin and Cartwright had planned. Remake the world, they’d said. Sitting out on Pluto and pulling strings that would remake the world.
Superstitions once. Hard facts now. Stories once to make the blood run cold. And now—
With the source dried up, with the screen empty, with the Pluto gang wiped out, the cults would die and Stella would sing on, but there would come a time when the listeners would turn away from Stella, when her novelty wore off, when the strangeness and the alienness of her had lost their appeal.