Eden (7 page)

"That's precisely what I mean."

It was late at night when they reached the knoll where their ship was. To travel faster, and also to avoid meeting any denizens of the copse, they went by way of an area where the vegetation parted to form a lane about sixty feet wide, as though an enormous plow had gone through. Nothing grew here but a velvety lichen and moss.

Hungry, tired, with only one flashlight, they decided to pitch their tent outside the ship. The Physicist had such a terrible thirst—their water supply had run out on the trek back—that he entered the tunnel and went into the ship. He was gone a long time. They were inflating the tent when they heard him shouting in the tunnel. They hurried over and helped him out. He was trembling, so upset that he couldn't speak.

"What happened? Calm down!" they shouted. The Captain grabbed him firmly by the shoulders.

The Physicist pointed to the hull looming above them. "There was something in there."

"What was it?"

"I have no idea."

"How do you know something was there?"

"I entered the navigation room by mistake. It was full of soil before, and now the soil is gone."

"Gone? Where is it?"

"I don't know."

"You looked into the other rooms?"

"Yes. I … wasn't sure that the navigation room had been full of soil, so at first I dismissed the thought, and went to the storeroom, where I found some drinking water, but I didn't have a cup, so I tried your cabin"—he glanced at the Cyberneticist—"and there…"

"What was it, damn it?!"

"Everything was covered with mucus."

"Mucus?"

"Sticky, transparent mucus—I must still have some of it on my boots!"

"But that could have been something leaking from the tanks, a chemical reaction. Remember, half our instruments in the laboratory were smashed."

"Ridiculous! Look at my boots!"

The Doctor's flashlight wandered down to the boots in question, which in places gleamed, as though coated with polyurethane.

"But that doesn't mean we had a visitor," said the Chemist lamely.

"It didn't sink in at first," the Physicist went on. "I took a cup and returned to the storeroom. I felt my soles sticking, but paid no attention. I had a drink of water, and on my way back suddenly decided to check the library—I don't know why. I was uneasy. I opened the door and—no soil, not a trace! But I had dumped that soil myself! And then I knew that the soil had disappeared in the navigation room, too."

"And then?" asked the Captain.

"I ran back here."

The flashlight illuminated the patch of ground where the men stood around the Physicist, who was still out of breath.

"Do we go in, or what?" asked the Chemist, though it was obvious that he was not volunteering.

"Let me see those boots again," said the Captain.

He almost banged his head against the Doctor's when the latter bent over simultaneously. They exchanged glances. Neither said a word.

"We have to do something," the Cyberneticist said desperately, as the Captain carefully examined the shiny layer that clung to the leather.

"All that happened was that a specimen of local fauna entered the ship and, finding nothing of interest, left," said the Captain at last.

"Some worm, perhaps, the size of a shark or two," the Cyberneticist babbled. "But what about the soil?"

"Yes, that is strange…"

The Doctor began to pace, then walked away. The beam of his flashlight swept the ground, then went higher, into the darkness.

Suddenly he shouted, "Here, I've found it!"

They ran over to him. He was standing near a furrow about thirty feet long that in places was covered by bits of shiny membrane.

"It looks as if it really was a worm," said the Physicist in a low voice.

"In that case we'll have to spend the night in the ship," the Captain decided.

"But we'll have to search the ship thoroughly before we can close the hatch."

"That will take all night!" groaned the Chemist.

"It can't be helped."

They left the tent to the mercy of whatever might be out there and went into the tunnel.

Every nook and cranny of the ship was inspected. The Physicist thought that pieces of broken panel in the control room had been moved, but no one was sure. Then the Engineer began to wonder if the tools used to dig the tunnel were in the same position in which they had left them.

"Look," said the Doctor impatiently, "we can't start playing detective now—it's almost two!"

At three they lay down on mattresses removed from the bunks, and it would have been even later had the Engineer not decided to forgo checking both levels of the engine room and simply to bolt from inside the doors leading to it in the steel bulkhead. The air was close, with an unpleasant lingering odor, but they were dropping with fatigue, and no sooner did they take off their boots and suits and extinguish the light than they fell into a heavy sleep.

The Doctor woke in total darkness. He raised his watch to his eyes—and was confused for a moment, because the time did not correspond to the darkness, but then he remembered that he was underground in the ship. The green dial said it was almost eight. Why did he wake so early? He grumbled to himself and was about to turn over when he froze.

Something was happening in the depths of the ship. He could feel it more than hear it: the floor throbbed. There was a distant thrumming, barely audible. He sat up, his heart pounding.

"It's come back!" he thought, imagining the creature whose slimy trail the Physicist had discovered. "It's trying to force open the entrance hatch."

The ship suddenly shuddered, as though some huge hand were trying to push it still deeper into the ground. One member of the crew groaned in his sleep. For a moment the Doctor felt his hair stand on end: the ship weighed sixteen thousand tons! The floor started shaking in a rapid, irregular rhythm. Then he understood. It was one of the drive units! Someone had got it going!

"Everybody up!" he shouted, groping for the flashlight.

The crew sprang to their feet, stumbling into one another in the dark and shouting, until the Doctor finally found the flashlight and turned it on. In a few words he explained.

The Engineer, still groggy, listened to the sound. The ship began to shake, and a mounting groan filled the air. "The air compressors in the port nozzles!" he cried.

The Captain said nothing as he zipped up his suit, and the others dressed hurriedly, but the Engineer ran out into the corridor as he was, in an undershirt and shorts, snatching the flashlight from the Doctor's hand on the way.

"What are you going to do?"

They hurried after him as he ran to the navigation room. The floor shook more and more violently. "Any moment now it'll snap the blades," he muttered, bursting into the room that had been cleared by the intruder. He rushed over to the main terminals and threw the switch.

A light went on in the corner. The Engineer and the Captain, now together, took the jector from the locker, removed it from its case, and connected it to the terminals as quickly as they could. The dials were broken, but the tube on the barrel showed bright blue. There was current; the jector was charging!

The floor shook so much that the metal tools on the shelves rattled, and a glass object fell off and shattered. Then suddenly all was still, and the light went out.

"Is it charged?" asked the Physicist.

"For two rounds at most. We're lucky to have even that," answered the Engineer, and tore the jector from the terminals, pointed its aluminum barrel toward the ground, and, clasping the handle, went out into the corridor and made for the engine room. They were halfway there, near the library, when there was an ungodly grating, and two or three convulsive jerks rocked the ship. Something in the engine room raised an ear-piercing din, and then another silence followed.

The Engineer and the Captain reached the armored door together. The Captain slid aside the peephole cover and looked in.

"Let me have the flashlight," he said.

The Doctor immediately put it in his hand, but it was difficult to direct light through the narrow aperture and see at the same time. The Engineer opened a second peephole, put his eye to it—and gasped.

"It's lying there," he said after a long pause.

"What?"

"Our visitor. Give me more light, lower, that's it! It's not moving." Then: "The thing's as big as an elephant."

"Has it touched the manifold track?" asked the Captain, who could see nothing.

"It appears to have got into the power lines instead. I can see … ends jutting out from under it."

"Ends of what?" The Physicist, behind them, was growing impatient.

"High-tension cables. It's still not moving. Shall we open the door?"

"We have to," the Doctor said, and shoved the main bolt aside.

"Maybe it's playing dead," suggested someone in back.

The other bolts slid smoothly in their mounts, and the door opened. No one crossed the threshold—the Physicist and the Cyberneticist looked over the shoulders of the men in front of them. Inside, on fragments of the shattered screen, squeezed between partition walls that had been forced aside, lay a naked humpbacked mass, glistening. Now and then a tremor ran across its surface.

"It's alive," whispered the Physicist.

There was a sharp, foul stench like that of burning horsehair, and wisps of bluish smoke curled in the beam of the flashlight.

"Just in case," said the Engineer, and raised the jector, pressing the stock to his hip and aiming at the shapeless mass. With a hiss the shot hit the steeply arched hulk right below its hump. The huge body stiffened, swelled, and seemed to cave in a little, to flatten. The partition walls shuddered, buckling on either side under the body's weight.

"Finis," declared the Engineer, crossing the steel threshold.

They went in. They tried—unsuccessfully—to locate the creature's legs and head. It lay on a detached part of the transformer, an inert, shapeless mass, its hump to one side, like a sack filled with jelly. The Doctor touched the side of the dead body, then brought his hand to his nose.

"Smell this," he said, holding out his hand to them; something like a white glue glistened on his fingertips. The Chemist was the first to sniff it. He cried out in surprise.

"You recognize it?" asked the Doctor.

They all smelled the glue—and recognized the acrid stink that had filled the "factory."

In a corner the Doctor found a bar he could use as a lever, slipped one end of it under the creature, and tried to turn the thing over. But the bar, instead, went almost halfway into the flesh.

"Wait," said the Engineer. "How could an animal like this have got the unit going?"

Everyone looked at him in dismay.

"You're right…" muttered the Physicist.

"We have to turn this thing over," the Doctor insisted. "Come on, everyone together, on the same side. That's it, don't be squeamish! Now what?"

"Hold on," said the Engineer. He went out, and returned a moment later with the steel poles they had used to dig the tunnel. These were slipped under the body and, at the Doctor's command, all lifted. The Cyberneticist shuddered when his hand slid down the slippery metal and touched the skin. With a dreadful smack the creature was rolled over on its side. Everyone jumped back. Someone shouted.

As from a gigantic, elongated oyster, a small two-armed trunk emerged between the thick, fleshy folds that closed winglike around it; dangling, its knotty fingers touched the floor. The thing, no bigger than a child's head, swayed back and forth, slower and slower, suspended from pale-yellow ligament membranes, until finally it came to rest. The Doctor was the first to pluck up the courage to approach it. He grasped the end of a limp, multijointed arm, and the small veined torso turned, revealing a flat, eyeless face with gaping nostrils and something jagged, like a tongue bitten in two, in the place where a man's mouth would be.

"An inhabitant of Eden…" whispered the Chemist.

The Engineer, too shaken to speak, sat down on the generator shaft and began wiping his hands unconsciously on his suit, over and over again.

"So is this one creature or two?" asked the Physicist, who was watching closely as the Doctor carefully touched the chest of the lifeless "man."

"Two in one or one in two—or maybe they're symbionts. It could even be that they separate at times."

"Like that horror with that single hanging black hair?" suggested the Physicist. The Doctor nodded and continued his examination.

"But this monster has no legs, no eyes, not even a head!" said the Engineer. He lit a cigarette—something he never did.

"That remains to be seen," replied the Doctor. "I suppose you won't mind if I dissect it? We'll have to cut up the thing anyway to get it out of here. I'd be grateful for an assistant, though this might be … unpleasant. Any volunteers?"

The Captain and the Cyberneticist stepped forward.

The Doctor stood up. "Good. I'll look for instruments—which will take a while. I must say, if the plot keeps thickening like this, a man will need a week to polish his shoes. We can't seem to finish anything we start."

The Engineer and the Physicist went out into the corridor. The Captain, returning from the first-aid room in a rubber apron and with his sleeves rolled up, carrying a nickel-plated tray full of surgical instruments, stopped and frowned at them.

"You know about the purifier. If you want to smoke, go outside."

So they made for the tunnel, and the Chemist joined them. Just to be safe, he took along the jector, which the Engineer had left in the engine room.

"How could that weird animal have set the generator going?" wondered the Engineer. He rubbed his cheeks: the stubble was so long that it didn't feel prickly. Everyone was growing a beard. They didn't seem to have the time to shave.

"At least the generator produced some current. That means the windings are sound."

"What about the short circuit?"

"It blew a fuse, that's all. The mechanical components are completely broken, but we'll get around that. As for the sockets, we have spares—it's only a matter of finding them. Theoretically we could repair the cylinder, too, but without the proper tools that would take forever. I think the reason I didn't make a thorough inspection at first was that I feared everything had been pulverized. You know what our position would have been."