23
The challenge came. It was quite close, coming from out there in the
mist and the darkness, strong and cold and relentless. It pulled me
across the room. I jerked open the door. As I stepped out into the
night I heard Laurie give a whimpering cry. Ahead of me the pounding
surf beckoned. I felt the unwanted constriction of fear but I felt
something more--human pride and defiance.
It was chill and damp and dark as a mine on the beach. The heavy mist
was moist against my face. I stood facing the pulsations of the alien
mind and slowly, like the curtain rising on a play, the mist began to
lift. With a fog's capriciousness, it rose above my head and stopped to
hang suspended over the beach, revealing now the white curve of sand,
the black swell of waves, the dim gray shapes of trailers, but still
blotting out the hills rising beyond.
And I saw her--a slim, small figure some fifty paces away, standing
very straight, a figure of fragile innocence. I thought with pity of
the young girl she once had been, the girl now soul-destroyed, the
human named Helen Darrow.
I felt no surprise. How easily I had been duped! I wondered if her
parents knew what she was or if they too were puppets dancing on a
string, playing a perfect pantomime of human life. And then I severed
all these cords of thought, cutting off the smell and taste and touch
of the sea air, opening my mind to the vibrations beating against it,
seeing, not with my eyes, but with the sightless vision of the mind.
I saw a coldness which wore the mask of hate but had not hatred's
feeling. My spirit shriveled at the sight of the ugliness, the vicious
indifference of the alien mind. An instinctive repugnance made me
recoil as if, feeling blindly in the grass, I had touched the cold
white belly of a snake. At that moment the alien struck.
"Drown!" The voice spoke.
"No!" I shouted aloud. "Not this time!"
The alien lashed out again, its overpowering vibrations forming words
that were in my mind but not of it. "Drown! Drown yourself!"
My feet dug into the sand. I braced myself against the thundering echo
in my ear.
"Walk! Now! Into the water!"
The strange motionless struggle continued, two minds locked in conflict
in that first struggle for mastery, like two wrestlers testing
strength, standing with feet spread wide, thick legs firm, hand linked
behind each other's neck, muscles bulging as the heads and shoulders
bend under the pressure, until the greater strength begins to tell and
in the weaker man a foot shifts suddenly, the corded forearms begin to
tremble, he feels himself slipping, weakening, falling as the force
comes down hard and strong and overpowering.
Tears blinded me. The alien voice obliterated thought, blotting out the
frustration and the anger and the pride. And one foot moved. A feeble
protest formed in familiar words as I spoke to myself, to the robot
body that had always been mine to command. Now the body heard another
voice, was deaf to the child's protesting cry.
"Walk! Walk! Walk!"
And I lived the dream of long ago, the nightmare which had brought me
here to the final crisis, the vision I had known would come true. I
felt the remembered numbing cold around my ankles, rising swiftly in a
cascade of foam. My feet dragging in the heavy surf, each step a battle
lost, each movement a breach smashed in the crumbling wall of my will.
I saw on the beach the alien enemy, cold, merciless, all-powerful, and
the consciousness that I had lost even before I had begun to fight
struck me down. My knees gave way and a toppling breaker tore my feet
from under me.
I rose out of the water to fight and lose again. And slowly I was
driven out to meet the deep black oblivion of the sea. Rigidly I kept
my mind locked against the one remaining hope. I walked, a broken,
tottering shell of resistance, without strength.
"Walk! Drown! Drown!"
And the undertow joined its tugging weight to the pressure of the mind
that drove me. The water swelled and dipped, rose at last above my
head and I went under. I had failed. Now it was over. Defeat and the
knowledge of hopelessness pushed me deeper. Now I could cease to fight.
Now I could give myself to the freezing numbness that stunned my flesh.
Now I could taste the warming draught of memory, relive in the final
instant of existence all that I had ever known and felt and dreamed,
all that I had loved and lost--
The feeble spark of life still flickered. Mind and body rebelled
against obliteration. I struggled weakly, straining upwards, steeling
my mind against the final, crushing blow of the alien mind.
Its voice was silent.
I dared not believe the sudden stab of reviving hope. For only a moment
I existed in what seemed a mental vacuum, hardly realizing that this
was but the normal state of the mind's autonomy. My eyes were open to
the cold wet sting of the salt water. I could see the brightness above
me near the surface. Lungs straining to burst, I thrust suddenly toward
the surface. There was a chance. It might have worked!
I burst like a bubble into the open, gulped life-giving air, my chest
heaving convulsively. I went under again as the bosom of the ocean
heaved in a giant swelling. I came up sputtering.
"Swim back!"
The alien spoke once more in my mind. My arms and legs began to move
automatically. They felt as if they were weighted down. I tried to
grasp the meaning of the new command. The voice had not been stilled,
but--
"Swim! Swim!"
Confused, still unable to control my limbs, I struck out weakly toward
the shore, was caught by the gathering thunderhead of a breaker and
carried swiftly forward, only to fall behind as the foaming crest
rushed on. Another wave picked me up like a bobbing cork and flung me
onward, arms threshing. In the torrent of the smashing waves another
tumult raged in my mind, a bewilderment of questions and brightening
hope.
"Swim!"
I caught the panic in the alien cry, sensed that the call was weaker.
The strength of exultation surged in my arms. With a renewed vigor,
I drove on to reach the peak of a swiftly rolling wave and soared in
like a surfboard on the rushing crest, was flung ahead to tumble head
over heels in the churning uproar of the broken wall of water. And now
the water rushed swiftly back away from me, receding down the slope of
the shore, and I was kneeling on my hands and knees just a few steps
away from the glistening sand of the shoreline. I dragged myself up and
staggered forward, stumbled, felt the strength go out of my legs and
fell face downward on the sand.
"Get up!" The alien voice spoke feebly. "Come here!"
I raised my head. The being housed in the body of Helen Darrow crouched
on the wet sand thirty feet away. Her face was grotesquely white like
the painted mask of a clown, her eyes huge black holes in the white
mask. She was pressing one hand tightly to her side and against the
pale color of her dress I saw a darker stain. My gaze swung up the
beach.
Laurie Hendricks lay inert, sprawled forward on her face. Beyond her
outflung hand something metallic glittered on the sand. The gun!
Triumph burst full blown in my mind. It had worked! While the alien
fought to drive me into the sea, Laurie, obedient to the impulse I had
planted in her mind, had crept unnoticed from her trailer and--
But what had happened to her? What had I done to her?
"Come here!"
The thought struck viciously with a desperate strength. I looked again
at the alien's twisted face, at the arm held out toward me in dramatic
repetition of the call to come. And at the end of the outstretched arm
was a crumbling stump. There was no hand!
I fought then with all the power that still remained in me, sensing
that I had almost won, driving from my mind the horror that beckoned
me, admitting no thought save the single dominant denial of the alien
call. And still the overwhelming pull of the strange vibrations dragged
me forward--one, two, three painful steps. There I held. I felt the
momentary flutter of her terror, saw a strange vision of the frozen
state of death, and from the alien's weakness found the power to hold.
She was dying! Life was pouring out of the mortally wounded body--and
the thing pulsating within wanted me! Wanted my body! _Needed_ it!
I held and knew the rising pulsation of its fear. The force which
pulled at me grew weaker. At last it hesitated, lashed out weakly,
stopped. The alien mind drew in upon itself. The vibrations of its
panic hammered at me without the power to move.
I stood motionless and watched the girl die. In the final moment of
life she gave a human cry. The body toppled forward and rolled over on
its back.
The pulsations of the alien mind went on. I felt them now as pain, wave
after wave of wordless vibrations beating in my brain until my eyes
filmed over. I blinked against the tears. Through the blur, the body on
the sand seemed to lose its distinguishable shape, to shed its human
form, to disintegrate in the way that the trunk of a hollow, rotten
tree eaten away from within will present a smooth, untarnished shell
to the eye until one day a sudden blow smashes the outer crust and the
tenuous hold of form is broken and the whole tree topples, collapses,
dank smelling, into a soft and shapeless heap of dust and debris.
And I saw the alien. It flowed like saliva from the open mouth, flowed
out and began to spread, out of the mouth that was no longer a mouth
but a shapeless hole in the face that was caving in upon itself.
Rigid with horror, I saw the body dissolve into powder. And among
the soft crumbling bones moved a thing of dazzling colors, a network
of glistening chains of cells spreading like the fingers of a spider
web. Salt spray blew over it and the dust of the decaying body stirred
like ashes in the wind. I saw the faintly gleaming, almost transparent
membranes that joined the network of cell fingers. Drops of water from
the spray clung to the filmy membranes like dew. The thing spread like
a stain upon the sand, groping among the powdery remains of Helen
Darrow's body, reaching out, stretching astonishingly.
Then it began to shrink, to draw its fingers in, folding in upon
itself, its movements jerky now, stiffening. The clamor of the alien
voice grew shrill. A probing tentacle touched the gray wet body of a
dead fish washed up on the shore. With blinding speed the membraneous
web contracted upon the fish, enveloping it in a tissue-thin film that
seemed to part and shrink as the alien invaded the foreign body, oozing
through the gaping mouth. I saw the white slit of a cut on the belly of
the fish and stared incredulous as the gash began to close, knitting
together, the wound healing as the alien exerted its terrifying power
upon the dormant flesh.
With a soft, wet squish, the dead body of the fish exploded, unable to
contain the hideous force. My skin crawled with revulsion. This was a
power of which I could not have dreamed, a force which had invaded a
human body, sapping its very fibers, devouring it from within while
holding its matter together until the last spark of life was snuffed
out, the alien's hold broken by the bullet from Laurie's gun smashing
into the decayed body. Sickness twisted in my stomach. I swayed
dizzily. The strumming vibrations of the alien mind shivered through my
head, soundless yet like an unendurable, endless screech.
And still I could not move as the alien flowed again on the wet sand,
drawing together as a cluster of frothy bubbles, spreading out once
more, the moist membranes hardly visible, the rainbow-hued strings of
its web-like body reaching, groping blindly, creeping toward me, closer
and closer. And a small sand crab scuttled toward it across the sand
between us. Sweating and shaking, I watched the hard-shelled creature
crawl toward its unseen enemy. A claw touched the moist tissue and the
alien struck with sudden violence, silent and terrible, enveloping,
smothering, invading the helpless body.
At last I moved. Looking around wildly I saw a chunk of jagged rock
half buried in the sand. I pawed it loose. The crab, possessed now,
turned a beady eye toward me as I swung around. The painful pulsing
in my mind rose harrowingly. With a choking sob of fury I smashed the
rock down upon the crab, raised it and smashed down again and again and
again, burying the broken, pulpy body in the sand. A sticky piece of
protoplasm flew through the air and stuck to my wrist. I brushed it off
and it adhered to my fingers like a living thing. I saw the glitter of
a tiny string of beads. It moved.
Acting without thought, I clawed in my pocket with my free hand and
grasped the small metal cylinder of the pocket lighter. I jerked it out
and pressed the button on the end. A thin blue finger of fire danced
from the nozzle. I turned the flame upon my fingers where the sticky
bit of substance stirred. In my mind there was a snap and shriek like a
violin string breaking. Gritting my teeth against the searing pain of
the burning flesh, I shook my fingers. The blackened thing dropped off.
I bent down to direct the flame upon the smashed remains of the crab
where the alien still crawled. I held it there until at last I was
struck by silence. The pulsations were gone. I stared down at the
contracted body of the alien.
At first my mind could register only shocked disbelief. What I saw was
so familiar that I could not comprehend its meaning. I thought I must
be truly mad. Glittering on the wet sand was a small hard cluster of
surfaces arranged into the frozen patterns of ordinary rock crystals.
On impulse I turned the blue jet of fire upon the chunk. It blackened
slowly. At first there seemed to be an infinitesimal shrinking, then
only a dark discoloration. When at last I stood erect, turning off the
lighter, I knew this alien mind was silenced forever.
I stared down at the blackened chunk of crystals, trying to sort out
all the answers that crowded through the suddenly opened door in my
mind. This much I knew for certain--strange rock and crystal formations
had been brought back from Mars. I had seen them carefully placed on
their shelves behind special glass doors. I remembered how strikingly
beautiful they had appeared in their dazzling interplay of light and
color.
With a shudder I thought of the scientist's habit of touching strange
crystals with the tongue.
* * * * *
When I reached Laurie, she was already stirring. I felt an intense
relief. Oblivious of the throbbing burn in my left hand, I knelt beside
her and put my arm under her shoulders to raise her to a sitting
position. Fainting had saved her life--and mine. If she had been
conscious the alien would not have needed _my_ body. He would have had
no need to call me back from the grave.
"Laurie? Can you hear me?"
Her eyes fluttered open, widened as she recognized me. I felt her
stiffen.
"It's all right now. She's dead. Because of you. Because you helped
me--"
She wrenched violently away from my supporting arm, cringing back from
me. "Don't touch me!"
Her voice was shrill with hysteria.
"There's nothing to be afraid of," I said soothingly. "It's all over
now."
I put out my hand and she began to whimper. "No! No, don't!
You're--you're one of them!"
The accusation stunned me.
"You're one of them!" Her mouth began to quiver. I saw the bloodless
lips, the glazed eyes of shock and fear. "Please," she begged. "Please
don't."
"Laurie, it's not true. I'm not one of them. I had to use you, I had to
make you shoot her. It was the only way...."
The words didn't reach her. For a moment longer I knelt beside her
trembling body on the sand, tasting the bitterness of her fear of me.
Of me! I knew there was nothing I could say that would wipe away the
memory of the dreadful whiplash of my own projected thoughts.
I stood up. She shrank further away from me. I turned to stare at the
blackened crystal fragment, at the shapeless heap of dust beside it,
washed now by the incoming tide. I felt no sense of triumph. In the end
it was not I who had won. The alien had been destroyed by an ordinary,
frightened human being.
The thought startled me. I confronted it with growing wonder. I had
used the phrase automatically: an ordinary human being. And what was I?
A thing to be feared. A step beyond.