"How are the radiation detectors behaving there, Grandfather?"
"One moment. I shall see." There was a silence. Then: "No unusual
activity, young Wang. Why?"
Wang told him. Then he asked: "Did you get hold of the air transport
authorities?"
"Yes. They have no missing aircraft, but they're checking with the space
fields. The way you describe it, the thing must be a spaceship of some
kind."
"I think so too. I wish I had a radiation detector here, though. I'd
like to know whether that thing is hot or not. It's only a couple of
miles away--maybe a little more--and if that blue glow is ionization
caused by radiation, it's much too close for comfort."
"I think any source that strong would register on our detectors here,
young Wang," said the old man in his dry voice. "However, I agree that
it might not be the pinnacle of wisdom to approach the source too
closely."
"Clear your mind of worry, Grandfather," Wang said. "I accept your words
of wisdom and will go no nearer. Meanwhile, you had best put in a call
to Central Headquarters Fire Control. There's going to be a blaze if I'm
any judge unless they get here fast with plenty of fire equipment."
"I'll see to it," said his grandfather, cutting off.
The bluish glow in the sky had quite died away by now, and the distant
rumbling was fading, too. And, oddly enough, there was not much smoke in
the distance. There was a small cloud of gray vapor that rose,
streamer-like, from where the glow had been, but even that was
dissipated fairly rapidly in the chill breeze. Quite obviously there
would be no fire. After several more minutes of watching, he was sure of
it. There couldn't have been much heat produced in the explosion--if it
could really be called an explosion.
Then Wang saw something moving in the trees between himself and the spot
where the ship had come down. He couldn't see quite what it was, there
in the dimness under the hanging, grasslike red strands from the trees,
but it looked like someone crawling.
"Halloo, there!" he called out. "Are you hurt?"
There was no answer. Perhaps whoever it was did not understand Russian.
Wang's command of English wasn't too good, but he called out in that
language.
Still there was no answer. Whoever it was had crawled out of sight.
Then he realized it couldn't be anyone crawling. No one could even have
run the distance between himself and the ship in the time since it had
hit, much less crawled.
He frowned. A wolf, then? Possibly. They weren't too common, but there
were still some of them around.
He unholstered the heavy pistol at his side.
And as he slid the barrel free, he became the first human being ever to
see the Nipe.
For an instant, as the Nipe came out from behind a tree fifteen feet
away, Wang Kulichenko froze as he saw those four baleful violet eyes
glaring at him from the snouted head. Then he jerked up his pistol to
fire.
He was much too late. His reflexes were too slow by far. The Nipe
launched himself across the intervening space in a blur of speed that
would have made a leopard seem slow. Two of the alien's hands slapped
aside the weapon with a violence that broke the man's wrist, while
other hands slammed at the human's skull.
Wang Kulichenko hardly had time to be surprised before he died.
_[3]_
The Nipe stood quietly for a moment, looking down at the thing he had
killed. His stomachs churned with disgust. He ignored the fading
hoofbeats of the slave-animal from which he had knocked the thing that
lay on the ground with a crushed skull. The slave-animal was
unintelligent and unimportant.
This was--had been--the intelligent one.
But so slow! So incredibly slow! And so weak and soft!
It seemed impossible that such a poorly equipped beast could have
survived long enough on any world to become the dominant life-form.
Then again, perhaps it was not the dominant form. Perhaps it was merely
a higher form of slave-animal. He would have to do more investigating.
He picked up the weapon the thing had been carrying and examined it
carefully. The mechanism was unfamiliar, but a glance at the muzzle told
him it was a projectile weapon of some sort. The spiraling grooves in
the barrel were obviously intended to impart a spin to the projectile,
to give it gyroscopic stability while in flight.
He tossed the weapon aside. Now there was a certain compassion in his
thoughts as he looked again at the dead thing. It must surely have
thought it was faced with a wild animal, the Nipe decided. Surely no
being would carry a weapon for use against members of its own or
another intelligent species.
He examined the rest of the equipment on the thing. There was very
little further information. The fabric in which it wrapped itself was
crude, but ingeniously put together, and its presence indicated that the
being needed some sort of protection against the temperature. It
appeared to have a thermal insulating quality. Evidently the creature
was used to a warmer climate. That served as additional information to
help substantiate his observation from space that the areas farther
south were the ones containing the major centers of population. The tilt
of this planet on its axis would tend to give the weather a cyclic
variation, but it appeared that the areas around the poles remained
fairly cold even when the incidence of radiation from the primary was at
maximum.
It would have been good, he decided, if he had stopped the slave-animal.
There had been more equipment on the thing's back which would have given
him more information upon which to base a judgment as to the level of
civilization of the dead being. That, however, was no longer
practicable, so he dismissed the thought from his mind.
The next question was, what should he do with the body?
Should he dispose of it properly, as one should with a validly slain
foe?
It didn't seem that he could do anything else, and yet his stomachs
wanted to rebel at the thought. After all, it wasn't as if the thing
were really a proper being. It was astonishing to find another
intelligent race; none had ever been found before, although the
existence of such had been postulated. There were certain criteria that
must be met by any such beings, however.
It must have manipulatory organs, such as this being very obviously did
have--organs very much like his own. But there were only two, which
argued that the being lacked dexterity. The organs for walking were
encased in protective clothing too stiff to allow them to be used as
manipulators.
He ripped off one of the boots and looked at the exposed foot. The thumb
was not opposed. Obviously such an organ was not much good for
manipulation.
He pried open the eating orifice and inspected it carefully. Ah! The
creature was omnivorous, judging by its teeth. There were both rending
and grinding teeth. That certainly argued for intelligence, since it
showed that the being could behave in a gentlemanly fashion. Still, it
was not conclusive.
If they _were_ intelligent, it was most certainly necessary for him to
show that he was also civilized and a gentleman. On the other hand, the
slowness and lack of strength of this particular specimen argued that
the species was of a lower order than the Nipe, which made the question
even more puzzling.
In the end, the question was rendered unnecessary for the time being,
since the problem was taken out of his hands.
A sound came from the ground a few yards away. It was an insistent
buzzing. Cautiously, the Nipe approached the thing.
_Buzz-buzz! Buzz-buzz-buzzzzzz!_
It was an instrument of some kind. He recognized it as the device that
he had seen the dead being speak into while he, himself, had been
watching from the concealment of the undergrowth, trying to decide
whether or not to approach. The device was obviously a communicator of
some kind, and someone at the other end was trying to make contact.
If it were not answered, whoever was calling would certainly deduce that
something had gone wrong at this end. And, of course, there was no way
for it to be answered.
It would be necessary, then, to leave the body here for others of its
kind to find. Doubtless they would dispose of it properly.
He would have to leave quickly. It was necessary that he find one of
their centers of production or supply, and he would have to do it alone,
with only the equipment he had on him. The utter destruction of his ship
had left him seriously hampered.
He began moving, staying in the protection of the trees. He had no way
of knowing whether investigators would come by air or on the
slave-animals, and there was no point in taking chances.
His sense of ethics still bothered him. It was not at all civilized to
leave a body at the mercy of lesser animals or monocells in that
fashion. What kind of monster would they think he was?
Still, there was no help for it. If they caught him, they might think
him a lower animal and shoot him. He would not have put an onus like
that upon them.
He moved on.
_[4]_
Government City was something of a paradox. It was the largest capital
city, in terms of population, that had ever been built on Earth, and
yet, again in terms of population, it was nowhere near as large as Tokyo
or London. The solution to the paradox lies in discovering that the term
"population" is used in two different senses, thus exposing the logical
fallacy of the undistributed middle. If, in referring to London or
Tokyo, the term "population" is restricted to those and only those who
are actively engaged in the various phases of actual government--as it
is when referring to Government City--the apparent paradox resolves
itself.
Built on the slagged-down remains of New York's Manhattan Island, which
had been destroyed by a sun bomb during the Holocaust nearly a century
before, Government City occupied all but the upper three miles of the
island, and the population consisted almost entirely of men and women
engaged, either directly or indirectly, in the business of governing a
planet. There were no shopping centers and no entertainment areas. The
small personal flyer, almost the same size as the old gasoline-driven
automobile, could, because of its inertia drive, move with the
three-dimensional ability of a hummingbird, so the rivers that cut the
island off from the mainland were no barrier. The shopping and
entertainment centers of Brooklyn, Queens, and Jersey were only five
minutes away, even through the thickest, slowest-moving traffic. It was
the personal flyer, not the clumsy airplane, that had really eliminated
distance along with national boundaries.
The majority of the government officers' homes were off the island, too,
but this commuting did not cause any great fluctuation of the island's
population. A city that governs a planet must operate at full capacity
twenty-four hours a day, and there was a "rush hour" every three hours
as the staggered six-hour shifts changed.
Physically the planet still revolved about the sun; politically, Earth
revolved around Government City.
In one of the towering buildings a group of men sat comfortably in a
medium-sized room, watching a screen that, because of the
three-dimensional quality and the color fidelity of the scene it showed,
might have been a window, except that the angle was wrong. They were
looking down from an apparent height of forty feet on a clearing in a
paper-tree forest in Siberia.
The clearing was not a natural one. The trees had been splintered,
uprooted, and pushed away from the center of the long, elliptical area.
The center of the area was apparently empty.
One of the men, whose fingers were touching a control panel in the arm
of his chair, said: "That is where the ship made its crash landing. As
you can see from the relatively light damage, it was moving at no great
speed when it hit. From the little information we have--mostly from a
momentary radar recording made when the incoming vessel was picked up
for a few seconds by the instruments of Transpolar Airways, when it
crossed the path of one of their freight orbits--it is estimated that
the craft was decelerating at between fifteen and seventeen gravities.
The rate of change of acceleration in centimeters per second cubed is
unknown, but obviously so small as to be negligible.
"This picture was taken by the fire prevention flyers that came in
response to an urgent call by the assistant of the forest ranger who was
in charge of this section."
"There was no fire?" asked one of the other men, looking closely at the
image.
"None," said the speaker. "We can't yet say what actually happened to
the ship. We have only a couple of hints. One of our weather observers,
orbiting at four hundred miles, picked up a tremendous flash of hard
ultraviolet radiation in the area around the three thousand Ångstrom
band. There must have been quite a bit of shorter wavelength radiation,
but the Earth's atmosphere would filter most of it out.
"A recording of the radiophone discussion between the ranger and his
assistant is the only other description we have. The ranger described a
bluish glow over the site. Part of that may have been due to actual
blue light given off by the--well, call it 'burning'; that word will do
for now. But some of the blue glow was almost certainly due to
ionization of the air by the hard ultraviolet. Look at this next
picture."
The scene remained the same, and yet there was a definite change.
"This was taken three days later. If you'll notice, the normal rust-red
of the foliage has darkened to a purplish brown in the area around the
crash site. Now a Martian paper-tree, even in the mutated form, is quite
resistant to U-V, since it evolved under the thin atmosphere of Mars,
which gives much less protection from ultraviolet radiation than Earth's
does. Nevertheless, those trees have a bad case of sunburn."
"And no heat," said a third man. "Wow."
"Oh, there was some heat, but not anywhere near what you'd expect. The
nearer trees were rather dry, as though they'd been baked, but only at
the surface, and the temperature probably didn't rise much above
one-fifty centigrade."
"How about X rays?" asked still another man. "Anything shorter than a
hundred Ångstroms detected?"
"No. If there was any radiation that hard, there was no detector close
enough to measure it. We doubt, frankly, whether there was any."
"The 'fire', if you want to call it that, must have stunk up the place
pretty badly," said one of the men dryly.
"It did. There were still traces of ozone and various oxides of nitrogen
in the air when the fire prevention flyers arrived. The wind carried
them away from the ranger, so he didn't get a whiff of them."
"And this--this 'fire'--it destroyed the ship completely?"
"Almost completely. There are some lumps of metal around, but we can't
make anything of them yet. Some of them are badly fused, but that
damage was probably done before the ship landed. Certainly there was not
enough heat generated after the crash to have done that damage." His
hand moved over the control panel in the armrest of his chair, and the
scene changed.
"This was taken from the ground. Those lumps you see are the pieces of
metal I was talking about. Notice the fine white powdery ash, which
caused the white spot that you could see from the air. That is evidently
all that is left of the hull and the rest of the ship. None of it is
radioactive.
"Random samplings from various parts of the area show that the ash
consists of magnesium, lithium, and beryllium carbonates."
"You don't mean oxides?" said one of the others.
"No. I mean carbonates. And some silicate. We estimate that the
remaining ash could not have constituted more than ten percent of the
total mass of the hull of the ship. The rest of it vaporized, apparently
into carbon dioxide and water."
"Some kind of plastic?" hazarded one of the men.
"Undoubtedly, if you want to use a catchall term like 'plastic'. But
what kind of plastic goes to pieces like that?"
That rhetorical question was answered by a silence.
"There's no doubt," said one of them after a moment, "that
circumstantial evidence alone would link the alien with the ship. But
have you any more conclusive evidence?"
The hand moved, and the scene changed again. It was not a pretty scene.
"That, as you can see, is a closeup of the late Wang Kulichenko, the
forest ranger who was the only man ever to see the alien ship before it
was destroyed. Notice the peculiar bruises on the cheek and ear--the
whole side of the head. The pattern is quite similar on the other side
of the head."
"It looks--umm--rather like a handprint."
"It is. Kulichenko was slapped--_hard!_--on both sides of his head. It
crushed his skull." There was an intake of breath.
"This next picture--" The scene changed. "--shows the whole body. If
you'll look closely you'll see the same sort of prints on the ground
around it. All very much like handprints. And that ties in very well
with the photographs of the alien itself."
"There's no doubt about it," said one of the others. "The connection is
definitely there."
The lecturer's hand moved over the control panel again, and suddenly the
screen was filled with the image of an eight-limbed horror with four
glaring violet eyes. In spite of themselves, a couple of the men gasped.
They had seen photographs before, but a full-sized three-dimensional
color projection is something else again.
"Until three weeks ago, we knew of no explanation for the peculiar
happenings in northern Asia. After eight months of investigation, we
found ourselves up against a blank wall. Nothing could account for that
peculiar fire nor for the queer circumstances surrounding the death of
the forest ranger. The investigators suspected an intelligent alien
life-form, but--well, the notion simply seemed too fantastic. Attempts
to trail the being by means of those peculiar 'footprints' failed. They
ended at a riverbank and apparently never came out again. We know now
that it swam downstream for over a hundred miles. Little wonder it got
away.
"Even those investigators who suspected something non-human pictured the
being as humanoid, or, rather, anthropoid in form. The prints certainly
suggest those of an ape. There appeared to be four of them, judging by
the prints--although frequently there were only three and sometimes only
two. It all depended on how many of his 'feet' he felt like walking
on."
"And then the whole herd of them dived into a river and never came up
again, eh?" remarked one of the listeners.
"Exactly. You can see why the investigators kept the whole thing quiet.
Nothing more was seen, heard, or reported for eight months.
"Then, three weeks ago, a non-vision phone call was received by the
secretary of the Board of Regents of the Khrushchev Memorial Psychiatric
Hospital in Leningrad. An odd, breathy voice, speaking very bad Russian,
offered a meeting. It was the alien. He managed to explain, in spite of
the language handicap, that he did not want to be mistaken for a wild
animal, as had happened with the forest ranger.
"The secretary, Mr. Rogov, felt that the speaker was probably deranged,
but, as he said later, there was something about that voice that didn't
sound human. He said he would make arrangements, and asked the caller to
contact him again the next day. The alien agreed. Rogov then--"
"Excuse me," one of the men interrupted apologetically, "but did he
learn Russian all by himself, or has it been established that someone
taught him the language?"
"The evidence is that he learned it all by himself, from scratch, in
those eight months."
"I see. Excuse my interruption. Go on."
"Mr. Rogov was intrigued by the story he had heard. He decided to check
on it. He made a few phone calls, asking questions about a mysterious
crash in the paper forests, and the death of a forest ranger. Naturally
those who _did_ know were curious about how Mr. Rogov had learned so
much about the incident. He told them.
"By the time the alien made his second call, a meeting had been
arranged. When he showed up, those of the Board who were still of the
opinion that the call had been made by a crank or a psychosis case
changed their minds very rapidly."
"I can see why," murmured someone.
"The alien's ability to use Russian is limited," the speaker continued.
"He picked up vocabulary and grammatical rules very rapidly, but he
seemed completely unable to use the language beyond discussion of
concrete objects and actions. His mind is evidently too alien to enable
him to do more than touch the edges of human communication.
"For instance, he called himself 'Nipe' or 'Neep', but we don't know
whether that refers to him as an individual or as a member of his race.
Since Russian lacks both definite and indefinite articles, it is
possible that he was calling himself 'a Nipe' or 'the Nipe'. Certainly
that's the impression he gave.
"In the discussions that followed, several peculiarities were noticed,
as you can read in detail in the reports that the Board and the
Government staff prepared. For instance, in discussing mathematics the
Nipe seemed to be completely at a loss. He apparently thought of
mathematics as a _spoken_ language rather than a _written_ one and could
not progress beyond simple diagrams. That's just one small example. I'm
just trying to give you a brief outline now; you can read the reports
for full information.
"He refused to allow any physical tests on his body, and, short of
threatening him at gunpoint, there was no practicable way to force him
to accede to our wishes. Naturally, threats were out of the question."
"Couldn't X rays have been taken surreptitiously?" asked one of the men.
"It was discussed and rejected. We have no way of knowing what his
tolerance to radiation is, and we didn't want to harm him. The same
applies to using any anesthetic gas or drug to render him unconscious.
There was no way to study his metabolism without his co-operation
unless we were willing to risk killing him."
"I see. Naturally we couldn't harm him."
"Exactly. The Nipe had to be treated as an emissary from his home
world--wherever that may be. He has killed a man, yes. But that has to
be allowed as justifiable homicide in self-defense, since the forester
had drawn a gun and was ready to fire. Nobody can blame the late Wang
Kulichenko for that, but nobody can blame the Nipe, either."
They all looked for a moment in silence at the violet eyes that gazed at
them from the screen.
"For nearly three weeks," the speaker went on, "humans and Nipe tried to
arrive at a meeting of minds, and, just when it would seem that such a
meeting was within grasp, it would fade away into mist. It was only
three days ago that the Russian psychologists and psychiatrists realized
that the reason the Nipe had come to them was because he had thought
that the Board of Regents of the hospital was the ruling body of that
territory."
Someone chuckled, but there was no humor in it.
"Now we come to yesterday morning," said the speaker. "This is the
important part at this very moment, because it explains why I feel we
must immediately take steps to tell the public what has happened, why I
feel that it is necessary to put a man like Colonel Walther Mannheim in
charge of the Nipe affair and keep him in charge until the matter is
cleared up. Because the public is going to be scared witless if we don't
do something to reassure them."
"What happened yesterday morning, Mr. President?" one of the men asked.
"The Nipe got angry, lost his temper, went mad--whatever you want to
call it. At the morning meeting he simply became more and more
incomprehensible. The psychologists were trying to see if the Nipe had
any religious beliefs, and, if so, what they were. One of them, a Dr.
Valichek, was explaining the various religious sects and rites here on
Earth. Suddenly, with no warning whatever, the Nipe chopped at
Valichek's throat with an open-hand judo cut, killing him. He killed two
more men before he leaped out of the window and vanished.
"No trace of him was found until late last night. He killed another man
in Leningrad--we have since discovered that it was for the purpose of
stealing his personal flyer. The Nipe could be anywhere on Earth by
now."
"How was the man killed, Mr. President? With bare hands, as the others
were?"
"We have no way of knowing. Identification of the body was made
difficult by the fact that every shred of flesh had been stripped away.
It had been gnawed--literally _eaten_--to the bone!"
_FIRST INTERLUDE_
The big man with the tiny child on his shoulder pushed through the air
curtain that kept the warm humid air out of the shop.
"There," he said to the little boy softly, turning his head to look up
into the round, chubby, smiling face. "There. Isn't that nicer, huh?
Isn't that better than that hot old air outside?"
"Gleefle-ah," said the child with a grin.
"Oh, come on, boy. I've heard you manage bigger words than that. Or is
it your brother?" He chuckled and headed toward the drug counter.
"Hey, Jim!"
The big man brought himself up short and turned--carefully, so as not to
jiggle the baby on his shoulder. When he saw the shorter, thinner man,
he grinned hugely. "Jinks! By God! Jinks! Watch it! Don't shake the hand
too hard or I'll drop this infant. God damn, man, I thought you were in
Siberia!"
"I was, Jim, but a man can't stay in Siberia forever. Is that minuscule
lump of humanity your own?"
"Yup, yup. So I've been led to believe. Say hello to your Uncle Jinks,
young 'un. C'mon, say hello."
The child jammed the three fingers of his left hand into his mouth and
refused to say a word. His eyes widened with an unfathomable
baby-emotion.
"Well, he's got your eyes," said the thinner man. "Fortunately, he's
going to look like his mother instead of being ugly. He _is_ a he, isn't
he?"
"That's right. Mother's looks, father's plumbing. I got another just
like him, but his mother's taking the other one to the doctor to get rid
of the sniffles. Don't want this one to catch it."
"Twins?"
"Naw," said the big man sarcastically, "Octuplets. The Government took
seventy-five percent for taxes."
"Ask a silly question, get a silly answer," the smaller man said
philosophically.
"Yup. So how's the Great Northern Wasteland, Jinks?"
"Cold," said Jinks, "but it's not going to be a wasteland much longer,
Jim. Those Martian trees are going to be a big business in fifteen
years. There'll be forests all over the tundra. They'll make a hell of a
fine income crop for those people. We've put in over five thousand
square miles in seedlings during the past five years. The first ones
will be ready to harvest in ten years, and from then on, it will be as
regular as clockwork."
"That's great. Great. How long'll you be in town, Jinks?"
"About a week. Then I've got to head back to Siberia."
"Well, look, could you drop around some evening? We could kill off a few
bottles of beer after we eat one of Ellen's dinners. How about it?"
"I'd love to. Sure Ellen won't mind?"
"She'll be tickled pink to see you. How about Wednesday?"
"Sure. I'm free Wednesday evening. But you ask Ellen first. I'll give
you a call tomorrow evening to make sure I won't get a chair thrown at
me when I come in the door."
"Great! I'll let her do the inviting, then."
"Look," Jinks said, "I've got half an hour or so right now. Let me buy
you a beer. Or don't you want to take the baby in?"
"No, it's not that, but I've got to run. I just dropped in to get a
couple of things, then I have to get on out to the plant. Some piddling
little thing came up, and they want to talk to me about it." He patted
the baby's leg. "Nothing personal, pal," he said in a soft aside.
"You taking the baby into an atomic synthesis plant?" Jinks asked.
"Why not? It's safe as houses. You've still got the Holocaust Jitters,
my friend. He'll be safer there than at home. Besides, I can't just
leave him in a locker, can I?"
"I guess not. Just don't let him get his genes irradiated," Jinks said,
grinning. "So long. I'll call tomorrow at twenty hundred."
"Fine. See you then. So long."
The big man adjusted the load on his shoulder and went on toward the
counter.
_[5]_
Two-fifths of a second. That was all the time Bart Stanton had from the
first moment his supersensitive ears heard the first faint whisper of
metal against leather.
He made good use of the time.
The noise had come from behind and slightly to the left of him, so he
drew his left-hand weapon and spun to the left as he dropped to a
crouch. He had turned almost completely around, drawn his gun, and fired
three shots before the other man had even leveled his own weapon.
The bullets from Stanton's gun made three round spots on the man's
jacket, almost touching each other, and directly over the heart. The man
blinked stupidly for a moment, looking down at the spots.
"My God," he said softly.
Then he returned his own weapon slowly to its holster.
The big room was noisy. The three shots had merely added to the noise of
the gunfire that rattled intermittently around the two men. And even
that gunfire was only a part of the cacophony. The tortured molecules of
the air in the room were so besieged by the beat of drums, the blare of
trumpets, the crackle of lightning, the rumble of heavy machinery, the
squawks and shrieks of horns and whistles, the rustle of autumn leaves,
the machine-gun snap of popping popcorn, the clink and jingle of falling
coins, and the yelps, bellows, howls, roars, snarls, grunts, bleats,
moos, purrs, cackles, quacks, chirps, buzzes, and hisses of a myriad of
animals, that each molecule would have thought that it was being shoved
in a hundred thousand different directions at once if it had had a mind
to think with.
The noise wasn't deafening, but it was certainly all-pervasive.
Bart Stanton had reholstered his own weapon and half opened his lips to
speak when he heard another sound behind him.
Again he whirled, his guns in his hands--both of them this time--and his
forefingers only fractions of a millimeter from the point that would
fire the hair triggers.
But he did not fire.
The second man had merely shifted the weapons in his holsters and then
dropped his hands away.
The noise, which had been flooding the room over the speaker system,
died instantly.
Stanton shoved his guns back into place and rose from his crouch. "Real
cute," he said, grinning. "I wasn't expecting that one."
The man he was facing smiled back. "Well, Bart, perhaps we have proved
our point. What do you think, Colonel?" The last was addressed to the
third man, who was still standing quietly, looking worried and surprised
about the three spots on his jacket that had come from the special
harmless projectiles in Stanton's gun.
Colonel Mannheim was four inches shorter than Stanton's five-ten, and
was fifteen years older. But in spite of the differences, he would have
laughed if anyone had told him five minutes before that he couldn't
outdraw a man who was standing with his back turned.
His bright blue eyes, set deep beneath craggy brows in a tanned face,
looked speculatively at the younger man.
"Incredible," he said gently. "Absolutely incredible." Then he looked at
the other man, a lean civilian with mild blue eyes a shade lighter than
his own. "All right, Farnsworth; I'm convinced. You and your staff have
quite literally created a superman. Anyone who can stand in a
noise-filled room and hear a man draw a gun twenty feet behind him is
incredible enough. The fact that he could and did outdraw and outshoot
me after I had started--well, that's almost beyond comprehension."
He looked back at Bart Stanton. "What's your opinion? Do you think you
can handle the Nipe, Stanton?"
Stanton paused imperceptibly before answering, while his ultrafast mind
considered the problem before arriving at a decision. Just how much
confidence should he show the colonel? Mannheim was a man with
tremendous confidence in his own abilities, but who was nevertheless
capable of recognizing that there were men who were his superiors in one
field or another.
"If I can't dispose of the Nipe," Stanton said, "no one can."
Colonel Mannheim nodded slowly. "I believe you're right," he said at
last. His voice was firm with inner conviction. He shot a glance at
Farnsworth. "How about the second man?"
Farnsworth shook his head. "He'll never make it. In another two years we
can put him into reasonable shape again, but his nervous system just
couldn't stand the gaff."
"Can we get another man ready in time?"
"Hardly. We can't just pick a man up off the street and turn him into a
superman. Even if we could find another subject with Bart's genetic
possibilities, it would take more time than we have to spare."
"No way at all of cutting the time down?"
"This isn't magic, Colonel," Farnsworth said. "You don't change a nobody
into a physical and mental giant by saying _abracadabra_ or by teaching
him how to pronounce _shazam_ properly."
"I'm aware of that," said the colonel without rancor. "It's just that I
keep feeling that five years of work on Mr. Stanton should have taught
you enough to be able to repeat the process in less time."
Farnsworth repeated the head-shaking. "Human beings aren't machines,
Colonel. They require time to heal, time to learn, time to integrate
themselves. Remember that, in spite of our increased knowledge of
anesthesia, antibiotics, viricides, and obstetrics, it still takes nine
months to produce a baby. We're in the same position, if not more so.
After all, we can't even allow for a premature delivery."
"I know," said Mannheim.
"Besides," Dr. Farnsworth continued, "Stanton's body and nervous system
are now close to the theoretical limit for human tissue. I'm afraid you
don't realize what kind of mental stability and organization are
required to handle the equipment he has now."
"I'm sure I don't," Colonel Mannheim agreed. "I doubt if anyone besides
Stanton himself _really_ knows." He looked at Bart Stanton. "That's it
then, son. You're it. You're the only answer we've found so far. And the
only answer visible in the foreseeable future to the problem posed by
the Nipe."
The colonel's face seemed to darken. "Ten years," he said in a low
voice. "Ten years that inhuman monster has been loose on Earth. He's
become a legend. He's replaced Satan, the Bogeyman, Frankenstein's
monster, and Mumbo Jumbo, Lord of the Congo, in the public mind. Read
the newsfacs, watch the newscasts. Take a look at popular fiction. He's
everywhere at once. He can do anything. He's taken on the attributes of
the djinn, the vampire, the ghoul, the werewolf, and every other horror
and hobgoblin that the mind of man has conjured up in the past half
million years."
"That's hardly surprising, Colonel," Bart Stanton said with a wry smile.
"If a human being had gone on a ten-year rampage of robbery and murder,
showing himself as callously indifferent to human life and property as
you and I would be to the life and property of a cockroach, and if, in
addition, he proved impossible to catch, such a person would be looked
upon as a demon too. And if you add to that the fact that the Nipe is
_not_ human, that he is as frightening in appearance as he is in
actions, what can you expect?"
"I agree," said Dr. Farnsworth. "Look at Jack the Ripper and consider
how he terrorized London a couple of centuries ago."
"I know," said Colonel Mannheim. "There have been human criminals whose
actions could be described as 'inhuman', but the Nipe has some touches
that few human criminals have thought of and almost none would have the
capacity to execute. If he has time to spare, his victims become an
annoying problem in identification when they're found. He leaves nothing
but well-gnawed bones. And by 'time to spare', I mean twenty or thirty
minutes. The damned monster has a very efficient digestive tract, if
nothing else. He eats like a shrew."
"And if he doesn't have time, he beats them to death," Bart Stanton said
thoughtfully.