The Beasts in the Void (3 page)

It was too late to help Jane. We saw her there, still and bloody. A
shiny black leopard was crouching gory-mouthed over her body with its
paws on her breast. It's eyes were black magnets, holding mine.

I said, "Get a gun," trying to speak without moving my lips.

"But—"

"Damn you—get a gun!"

Murdo staggered away. It seemed a year before he came back with a
Hinzie Special .442. The leopard was tight, ready to spring. I didn't
dare move a muscle. I said, "Over my shoulder. Get him. Don't miss."

That last was a little silly. How could a man miss with a Hinzie at
ten feet? Murdo fired and tore the leopard's head off. It was down
already so it didn't move. It sat there headless, its tail twitching
slightly. Then it was still.

I didn't hesitate this time. I said, "Come on. We've got to get this
out of here before the others show."

We put the dead leopard into the forward storage bunker. Then I picked
up poor Jane and carried her to her room. Murdo helped me up the
ladder. The others were in the companionway and they pressed back in
horror to let me pass. For the first time since we'd started, Keebler
was sober. Ashen, shaking, stone sober. He broke; screamed and ran for
his bottle, the world of reality too terrible for him to bear.

There was no huddle, no conference, no meeting of the minds. Everyone
else went to the galley and sat staring into space; stared at the
dancing little sparkles in the air.

I went to my cabin.

When confronted by a reality no matter how crazy and improbable, a man
must not turn from it. He can not carry the mangled body of a woman in
his arms and then say to himself:
This isn't real because it doesn't
make sense.
It
does
make sense—some kind of sense or it would not
exist. A man must say rather:
I don't understand this and maybe I
never will but God gave me a brain and I must try. I can't sit back
and deny reality. I must try to understand it.
I cleared my mind and
tried to rationalize the things around us.

Out in the darkness there was a terrible roaring and yammering. The
thuds and bellows of violence. I went to the port.

There, in the light from the ship, the ice bear and the water buffalo
were fighting. It was a terrible and magnificent thing but to me it
was anticlimax; a sideshow of almost casual interest.

The ice bear outsized the water buff by too much to be in any danger,
but the buff fought savagely and the ice bear had no easy time. The
buff opened a long deep gash in the bear's throat when the bear missed
a lunge and the Plutonian mammal fell back with a roar of pain and
fury. They came together again and this time the bear got the buff in
a hug and it was all over. The buff's spine broke and the bear bent
the body double, then tore it to pieces. I wondered if the others were
watching.

I went back to pacing; back to my thinking.

I have been thinking, thinking, thinking; wracking my brain. And of
one thing I am sure. Some invisible intelligence is trying to help me;
trying to give me knowledge. The sparkling fog?

A great and wonderful thing has happened.

And I know.
Do you realize what that means? To know in a situation
like this? And to be wonderfully and wildly happy? The knowledge was
not all given me. There was a thought process of my own developing.
The thing given me was the basic knowledge upon which to build. And
proof of this knowledge. Absolute and indisputable proof.

The sparkling fog is mind stuff.

I will not defend that statement. I will not rationalize it. But I
will seek explanations; consider possibilities.

Known: This sparkling fog through which we drift is intelligent
matter; the stuff of thoughts; the basic material from which
consciousness springs. It is consciousness itself.

Supposed: It is probably electronuclear in composition, and appears to
be completely innocent. By that I mean it has no intention to harm,
perhaps because it does not understand the difference between good and
evil, harm and help, pain and pleasure.

It has only one urge; the basic urge of all creation. To evolve, to
develop. As the tree has but one basic urge—to grow and greaten; the
flower but one desire—to bloom, to improve; to assert itself through
evolution and become better.

Perhaps—and who can successfully deny it?—this great space cloud
could be a storage place of the Creator Himself; a storage place for
mind stuff. When an infant or an animal or a plant is touched with the
magic thing called life—where does that magic come from? Is it
created at the very moment or does it come somehow from a source-pile?
Is this cloud a source-pile of life itself? No one can say. But I
think I've hit on a limitation of this mind stuff. I'm going to try an
experiment and pray to God it works.

I'm going to find Murdo and knock him unconscious.

I have solved the mind-stuff. What just happened is the last bit of
proof I need. I went to the galley. Murdo had wandered away. I found
him in the lounge. I stepped casually in front of him, set myself, and
drove a straight right to his jaw. He went down like a log.

I closed my eyes and counted to twenty praying to God to make me right
in my belief—in the crazy theory I evolved. I opened my eyes and
turned to the storage locker. I looked inside.

The dead leopard was gone.

I went to the port and looked out. The huge ice bear had been ravening
insanely among the shreds of the water buffalo's body. As I watched
both bear and buff began fading.

Before my eyes, they disappeared, evolved back into the stuff of the
sparkling fog. I had proved my theory.

Now all the parts dropped into place. The mind stuff has only the
ability and the urge to evolve—nothing else—no imagination. It can
evolve only if given something to reproduce.

This it can get only from a human mind. It is able to see an image
pictured in the human memory and reproduce it in a state of absolute
reality.

Witness: Jane saw a tiger in the companionway. Clear in her memory was
the image of the tiger she had shot at in India. The mind-stuff saw it
and reproduced it in reality. The water buffalo came from my own mind.
I killed one exactly like it a year ago. The ice bear was out of
Murdo's memory as was the black leopard and the snake.

Witness: The three animals created inside the ship did not appear
until the mind stuff from outside penetrated the hull and entered the
ship. They were of normal size. But the animals created outside the
ship were far out of proportion, the ice bear especially. Why?
Because, I believe, the mind stuff is denser in the void. There it has
more strength.

My defense against the mind stuff was formulated almost accidentally.
I remembered the sequence of Jane's tiger. She saw it, entered my
cabin, realized its significance, and fainted. I looked into the
companionway and saw the tiger fading.

So I knocked out Murdo for final proof and got it. As soon as he
lapsed into unconsciousness the recreations from his mind turned back
into sparkling fog. Obviously, and a heaven-sent phenomenon it is—the
mind stuff immediately loses its subject-image when the mind from
which it came goes unconscious. The mind-stuff has no memory of its
own and cannot hold its recreated image in the evolved form under
conditions of unconsciousness. The answer now becomes simple.

I drugged Murdo before he regained consciousness. I drugged the other
three by means of whisky and food. They have been unconscious for
twelve hours. Nothing has happened. I shall keep them that way.

The mind-stuff is trying to complain to me. Almost petulantly; as a
child. I sense it sharply. It does not understand the wrong it has
done and feels it has been deprived of its right.

I have no time for the mind-stuff. I guard myself against it and
ignore it. There are other things on my mind. Shall I go back if we
ever escape from the sparkling fog? I don't know. I don't want to go
back. I want to go on and on forever just like this. But the others
cannot go on like this. It would be murder. I don't know.—I don't
know.

I must keep awake. I use drugs. I must not sleep—not sleep.

We have cleared the fog. The instruments are working again. Again the
stars glow. What shall I do.
Melody....

Kennedy
looked up from his reading. "As I said,"—and he spoke
severely—"you break off at an abrupt point. You did not complete the
log."

Holloway's red eyes were glazed. "I had other things to do. I was
tired of keeping a log."

Mason sought to draw Kennedy off his quarry. "There's an odd point,"
he said, looking at Holloway. "Only animals were recreated. Do you
think the mind stuff was capable only of recreating animals?"

Holloway spoke in an exhausted monotone. "It took the clearest image
from the strongest minds. Murdo thought mainly of hunting. He
pondered on his more spectacular kills. Thus the mind-stuff used his
images."

"I see."

Holloway seemed to sag—to shrink. He said, "The mind-stuff could
recreate anything. It brought Melody back to me."

Kennedy sprang to his feet. "There is no reference in this log to—"

Mason turned on him. "Shut up, you fool!" He laid a gentle hand on
Holloway's shoulder. "Tell us about it, old chap."

Holloway turned his burning eyes on the closed door to the next room.
"She's in there. I wanted to get rid of you. I was afraid you would
take her away from me. But it's no use. I can't hold my consciousness
much longer. Then she will vanish."

Holloway tried weakly to rise from his chair. He called,
"Melody—Melody baby!"

The door opened. A beautiful girl in a blue dressing gown came
gracefully into the room. She walked straight to Holloway and took his
tortured head into her soft hands. Her eyes pleaded with the men. "He
suffers so. He will not sleep. I can't make him sleep. I—I don't
understand."

Holloway's head dropped suddenly onto his chest. He slumped down in
his chair. And as he did so, a change took place. The two men stood
rooted, staring.

As Melody began to fade. Slowly, slowly, into a transparent image,
into a mist, into a handful of sparkling fog.

Then she was gone.

Mason knelt by the bone-thin body in the chair. He made a quick
examination and got wearily to his feet.

"Holloway is dead," he murmured. "Drugs of that nature would kill an
elephant. I can't understand how he lived so long."

Kennedy blinked and seemed to come out of a trance. He frowned. "And
the investigation hardly started."

Mason shook his head and looked pityingly at Kennedy. It was just no
use with a man like him. Mason said. "There's one point entirely
apparent without an investigation."

"What's that?"

Mason's voice was sharp and cold. "That our little playboy, for all
his reputation of frivolity, was a better man than you and I put
together. Does that register, Mr. Kennedy?"

Kennedy flared. "Now see here. I'm only doing my job!"

"Oh shut up," Mason said.

And strode out of the room.