The Incredible Melting Man (15 page)

Steve cursed and tore at the handle. He wanted to be free of the module and away from the sickening memories of their struggle with the invading substance. He wanted to be somewhere safe where he could get rid of the stifling space suit, where he could breath without this awful constriction in his lungs that made them burn. Most of all he wanted to be alone at the observation dome aboard the returning ship contemplating the vast infinity of his universe in peace.

With the help of the others he got the door to move. It tore like setting adhesive, and flakes of red, like lichen, fell at their feet. The hinges were coated with the stuff and it was an effort to prise the door back far enough for them to pass through. The surrounds were covered in fronds of the dried jelly, light and dry so that they waved in the gently circulating air of the cabin. They seemed to be beckoning the men through into another world.

They hesitated, none of them wishing to go first. They sensed a hostile presence, as if they’d brought something with them from the still centre of the Martian storm, something that hadn’t finished with them yet.

The lights which normally went on inside the airlock when the hatch was opened weren’t working. The stuff must have wrecked the contact. It was too dark to see inside, dark with a faint glimmer of red.

Steve took a torch and shone it inside. It illuminated nothing. It was as useless as a torch in dense fog, the light scattering, glowing red.

They had to run the gauntlet if they were to get back into the ship. An unknown gauntlet.

He turned to the others and wanted to embrace them, bid them goodbye. They’d travelled forty million miles from Earth, but the few feet back into the ship was to be the longest journey. He wanted to feel the warmth of their bodies, know that the blood coursed there like it did in his own body. Through them he wanted to confirm his own humanity before he lost it. But he could only feel the lifeless fabric of their suits, and through the visors of their helmets see the eyes dilated with fear.

He turned and disappeared into the hatch.

It was like entering a huge eye, through the flecked surround where the dried jelly hung and into the dark cavity beyond the pupil. The airlock had become the black storeroom for the alien consciousness and he felt its presence as it squatted among the unlost images of its own genesis.

He saw the angry predator again rampaging through the green fields of the young planet in a riot of brutal carnage. Only this time he was no longer a spectator but the prey, stumbling along on legs of wool as the sky behind him curdled with hate and the hot saliva dripped on his neck in the eternity before death struck.

He bathed with the jubilant hunters in the flooding streams of crimson blood that burst from the torn flanks of their victim, and watched it turn to mud as the shells of war whined and the cordite seared his lungs. It held him tied to the spot as the bomb at his feet ticked away.

Then he saw the birth of the alien force, the anti-life. He watched the nuclear creation.

The silver bomb hung over the geometrical city. It carried the seeds that would spill from the ripped nuclei of the exploding atoms. Beneath it the people swarmed in wild panic, clusters of living cells for the seeds to fertilise. The bomb burst and in the white-hot crucible of the seared city, life embraced death in an ecstasy of destructive creation. In the heat of a thousand suns the raw forces of life were fused with the energy of matter. The living protoplasm of the city, of the planet, was unmade and made again with a new and vital element—the mutant gene of pure aggression. The quintessence of destruction was born out of the supreme folly of warfare.

The universe stood silent witness to the creation of her most deadly species.

As the dust settled on the lost civilisation of Mars, crisp red flakes, like lichen, fell and lay hidden.

So it had waited through the empty aeons for the tell-tale flash that told of a civilisation coming to maturity. But no one came. Sometimes in a fury of impatience it would set off and scour the dead surface of the planet, searching hungrily like a dog licks an empty bowl. But nothing had survived. It could only wait.

Then the flash came, so close to home. The blue star, its nearest neighbour. What incredible luck!

After so long waiting it seemed so short a time before they arrived. And to send them back and wait a little longer for others to come was no hardship. To destroy them now would be rash and foolish. They were the bait to hook a whole star and sate its lust for destruction for ever. Or until others came from other worlds. And others.

So it let them go.

They never spoke about their ordeal in the airlock on the long journey back. It was to each his personal nightmare and they kept it locked away, hidden with the alien seeds they bore. There would be a time, a season, when the truth would be known. Meanwhile they must wait, protectively, as a man protects the knowledge of his cancer from the pity or disgust of others.

Long after they had left the orbit of the red planet, the module was drawn relentlessly back into the thin Martian atmosphere. It spiralled downwards through the alien sky and burst in a cloud of dust and twisted metal on to the darkened planetary floor. Before the dust had time to settle a red shape gathered itself up from the broken remains and scuttled off deep into the Martian shadows like a giant spider.

ELEVEN

F
RED
Z
IMWELL
had grown very nervous. They’d moved the radioactive dish into some apparatus on the bench above him. As he crouched underneath he rehearsed the doctor’s words: naked aggression, inimical to all human life. He’d picked up enough from their conversation to know that he’d stumbled across the secret of the three missing astronauts, that they’d brought back some deadly alien growth, and that he was on to the biggest scoop of all time. He’d got to file his story within the next hour if he was to stand any chance of getting it to press that day.

The thing to do was to reveal himself now and damn the consequences. He’d need their co-operation if his story was to have any credibility, and he’d been encouraged by the doctor’s threat about blowing the gaff. He couldn’t afford to wait any longer. Besides, he was pretty sure he’d heard some nasty noises coming from the bench above. That thing could be trying to get out.

He was just moving his aching legs when a telephone rang. He heard the other scientist walk across the lab and answer it. There was a long pause then a gasp of astonishment. “Radio signals?” he heard the scientist say. “Are you sure?” Another long pause and the tone of voice changed to one of urgency. “I’ll see that he’s told right away,” he said. “Thank you.” As he put the receiver down the lab door burst open. It was Nelson.

“Irresponsible lunatics!” he bellowed. “What do I have to do to convince them to call it off? They think to increase the thickness of the radiation shields is enough. What do they know about it?” he raged. “Bloody clockwork soldiers prepared to put international prestige before human life. Well we’ll see what the rest of the world thinks about that. I’m getting on to the press agencies.”

Zimwell couldn’t believe he’d get such a cue. He self-consciously extricated himself from beneath the bench and delivered a breathless introduction. Never before had he felt so profoundly the inadequacy of the reputation of the Trentham
Globe.

Before he had time to finish, Loring had reached for the phone and was asking for security. Nelson stopped him.

“It’s the first break we’ve had,” he told Loring. “It’s a threat we can use that will make them listen.”

“And you’ll go to jail,” retorted Loring. “To say nothing of what will happen to your job and the centre.”

“I’ve just resigned the job,” answered the doctor coldly. “My one and only concern now is to alert the world to the dangers of Prometheus Two leaving Earth. Nothing else matters.”

Loring was silent. “I think there’s something else you should know,” he said. “I’ve just had the HEP lab on with their analysis of the electron microscope plate. The track was caused by a highly penetrative radioactive particle being used as a carrier signal for some sort of complex chemical data.”

“What?” exclaimed Nelson. “How do they know that?”

“One of their satellites has been receiving the signal for the past fortnight. Ever since Prometheus One landed, in fact.”

“You mean those cells in Steve have been transmitting data about him ever since they got back?” interrupted Nelson. “That something out there on Mars is monitoring the changes taking place in his body? Measuring the success of the alien cells which it infected him with?”

Loring nodded grimly.

Nelson covered his tired eyes in a gesture of despair.

“He’s been a guinea-pig all along,” he said as he saw the scale of the threat confirmed. “When the crew of Two get up there it will know exactly what to do to breed off them successfully. What they bring back will make Steve’s exploits seem like a vicarage teaparty. My God!”

There was an eruption of sound from the lead cabinet where they’d put the culture.

“Make sure that’s locked and put those leads bricks on top so that they’ll absorb all the radiation,” instructed Nelson. “We may unwittingly have been helping it. We’ll have to starve the stuff to death. And make sure all the other cultures are destroyed. Incinerate them to be sure.”

He turned to Zimwell with a strange appraising look.

“You’d better come with me, and get ready to write the biggest story since the Flood.”

As Zimwell put the finishing touches to his notes and prepared to leave for the office, Doctor Nelson’s pocket radio began to bleep imperiously. He grabbed it and switched it on.

“Nelson,” he barked.

“Sharpe here,” came a precise military voice. “We’ve got him.”

Nelson’s hand stiffened round the set. “Where is he?” he demanded.

“He’s been spotted in the marshalling yard at the Gretworth Power Plant. We’ve got the place surrounded.” The voice sounded grave. “He’s got two others. Two hobos who were camping by the lines. They’re a right mess.”

“Don’t go near him,” ordered Nelson. “I’ll be round right away.”

The doctor grabbed his medical bag and sprinted towards the door.

“See you get that story out,” he shouted to Zimwell as he disappeared into the corridor. “I’m banking on you.”

Zimwell was close on his heels. “All right if I tag along—?” he began. But the doctor wasn’t listening. He pushed his head round the lab door and shouted some instructions to his assistant then he was off down the corridor at full tilt in the direction of the car park. By the time Zimwell had got his head outside the doctor was into his car and speeding towards the gate.

Zimwell dashed after him. He didn’t wait to answer the cries of the security man on the gate. The one thing that would make this story was a picture. If he could get a shot of the maniac spaceman it would be better than a thousand of Nelson’s dire forecasts about the future of the world if the launch went ahead. He had a camera in the car and he reckoned he’d just got time to follow Nelson to the plant and take some pictures and get back to the office ready to phone through his story and accept the invitation to join the staff of the
New York Times.

He emitted a whoop of delight as he jumped into the driving seat of his car and set off at breakneck speed after the doctor.

The marshalling yard was crawling with military personnel and police when Doctor Nelson arrived. They were all here now, he reflected bitterly. But where had they been for the past eighteen hours during which time seven lives had been lost?

He glanced at his watch. Two thirty. In four and a half hours the first fatal move would begin in an insane enterprise which would lead to the death of millions. Unless the newspapers did their work and he could come up with proof that his theory was true. If he could get to Steve and speak to him he still believed he could learn what really happened to the crew of Prometheus One.

Mist had gathered in the cold night air. A heavy orange aura spilt from the sodium lights and bathed the power plant complex. The giant cooling towers rose out of the orange mist, smooth-flanked and grey as sick flesh. Above them cloud had hidden the moon and stars.

The Captain met him at the gate. He was brisk and efficient.

“He’s over by the second tower. He doesn’t seem to want to move. We’ve got him surrounded and I’ve got lights on him. There’s no question of us losing him this time.” Then he added grimly: “And we’ve got machine-guns on the bastard too in case he tries anything.”

Nelson looked at him sharply but the Captain had read his thoughts.

“You should see what he’s done to those poor hobos,” he said bitterly. “I thought I’d seen everything when we found that farmer, but that was nothing.”

They were halfway across the huge yard. Over to their left was the main turbine room where they could hear the hum of the generators. Ahead the scene was changing. The area was grassed and the night filled with the sound of cascading water.

“No wonder he doesn’t want to move,” said Nelson as he felt the full force of the downdraught of cold air as they passed the first cooling tower.