“Would I do?” Garry asked.

“That will make two,” Copper nodded. “I’ll get to work on it right away.”

“What about Connant in the meantime?” Kinner demanded. “I’m going out that door and head off for the Ross Sea before I cook for him.”

“He may be human—” Copper started.

Connant burst out in a flood of curses. “Human! May be human, you damned saw-bones! What in hell do you think I am?”

“A monster,” Copper snapped sharply. “Now shut up and listen.” Connant’s face drained of color and he sat down heavily as the indictment was put in words. “Until we know—you know as well as we do that we have reason to question the fact, and only you know how that question is to be answered—we may reasonably be expected to lock you up. If you are—unhuman—you’re a lot more dangerous than poor Blair there, and I’m going to see that he’s locked up thoroughly. I expect that his next stage will be a violent desire to kill you, all the dogs, and probably all of us. When he wakes, he will be convinced we’re all unhuman, and nothing on the planet will ever change his conviction. It would be kinder to let him die, but we can’t do that, of course. He’s going in one shack, and you can stay in Cosmos House with your cosmic ray apparatus. Which is about what you’d do anyway. I’ve got to fix up a couple of dogs.”

Connant nodded bitterly. “I’m human. Hurry that test. Your eyes— Lord, I wish you could see your eyes staring—”

Commander Garry watched anxiously as Clark, the dog-handler, held the big brown Alaskan husky, while Copper began the injection treatment. The dog was not anxious to cooperate; the needle was painful, and already he’d experienced considerable needle work that morning. Five stitches held closed a slash that ran from his shoulder across the ribs half way down his body. One long fang was broken off short; the missing part was to be found half-buried in the shoulder bone of the monstrous thing on the table in the Ad Building.

“How long will that take?” Garry asked, pressing his arm gently. It was sore from the prick of the needle Dr. Copper had used to withdraw blood.

Copper shrugged. “I don’t know, to be frank. I know the general method, I’ve used it on rabbits. But I haven’t experimented with dogs. They’re big, clumsy animals to work with; naturally, rabbits are preferable, and serve ordinarily. In civilized places you can buy a stock of human-immune rabbits from suppliers, and not many investigators take the trouble to prepare their own.”

“What do they want with them back there?” Clark asked.

“Criminology is one large field. A says he didn’t murder B, but that the blood on his shirt came from killing a chicken. The State makes a test, then it’s up to A to explain how it is the blood reacts on human-immune rabbits, but not on chicken-immunes.”

“What are we going to do with Blair in the meantime?” Garry asked wearily. “It’s all right to let him sleep where he is for a while, but when he wakes up—”

“Barclay and Benning are fitting some bolts on the door of Cosmos House,” Copper replied grimly. “Connant’s acting like a gentleman. I think perhaps the way the other men look at him makes him rather want privacy. Lord knows, heretofore we’ve all of us individually prayed for a little privacy.”

Clark laughed bitterly. “Not any more, thank you. The more the merrier.”

“Blair,” Copper went on, “will also have to have privacy—and locks. He’s going to have a pretty definite plan in mind when he wakes up. Ever hear the old story of how to stop hoof-and-mouth disease in cattle?

“If there isn’t any hoof-and-mouth disease, there won’t be any hoof-and-mouth disease,” Copper explained. “You get rid of it by killing every animal that exhibits it, and every animal that’s been near the diseased animal. Blair’s a biologist, and knows that story. He’s afraid of this thing we loosed. The answer is probably pretty clear in his mind now. Kill everybody and everything in this camp before a skua gull or a wandering albatross coming in with the spring chances out this way and—catches the disease.”

Clark’s lips curled in a twisted grin. “Sounds logical to me. If things get too bad—maybe we’d better let Blair get loose. It would save us committing suicide. We might also make something of a vow that if things get bad, we see that that does happen.”

Copper laughed softly. “The last man alive in Big Magnet—wouldn’t be a man,” he pointed out. “Somebody’s got to kill those—creatures that don’t desire to kill themselves, you know. We don’t have enough thermite to do it all at once, and the decanite explosive wouldn’t help much. I have an idea that even small pieces of one of those beings would be self-sufficient.”

“If,” said Garry thoughtfully, “they can modify their protoplasm at will, won’t they simply modify themselves to birds and fly away? They can read all about birds, and imitate their structure without even meeting them. Or imitate, perhaps, birds of their home planet.”

Copper shook his head, and helped Clark to free the dog. “Man studied birds for centuries, trying to learn how to make a machine to fly like them. He never did do the trick; his final success came when he broke away entirely and tried new methods. Knowing the general idea, and knowing the detailed structure of wing and bone and nerve-tissue is something far, far different. And as for other-world birds, perhaps, in fact very probably, the atmospheric conditions here are so vastly different that their birds couldn’t fly. Perhaps, even, the being came from a planet like Mars with such a thin atmosphere that there were no birds.”

Barclay came into the building, trailing a length of airplane control cable. “It’s finished, Doc. Cosmos House can’t be opened from the inside. Now where do we put Blair?”

Copper looked toward Garry. “There wasn’t any biology building. I don’t know where we can isolate him.”

“How about East Cache?” Garry said after a moment’s thought. “Will Blair be able to look after himself—or need attention?”

“He’ll be capable enough. We’ll be the ones to watch out,” Copper assured him grimly. “Take a stove, a couple of bags of coal, necessary supplies and a few tools to fix it up. Nobody’s been out there since last fall, have they?”

Garry shook his head. “If he gets noisy—I thought that might be a good idea.”

Barclay hefted the tools he was carrying and looked up at Garry. “If the muttering he’s doing now is any sign, he’s going to sing away the night hours. And we won’t like his song.”

“What’s he saying?” Copper asked.

Barclay shook his head. “I didn’t care to listen much. You can if you want to. But I gathered that the blasted idiot had all the dreams McReady had, and a few more. He slept beside the thing when we stopped on the trail coming in from Secondary Magnetic, remember. He dreamt the thing was alive, and dreamt more details. And—damn his soul—knew it wasn’t all dream, or had reason to. He knew it had telepathic powers that were stirring vaguely, and that it could not only read minds, but project thoughts. They weren’t dreams, you see. They were stray thoughts that thing was broadcasting, the way Blair’s broadcasting his thoughts now—a sort of telepathic muttering in its sleep. That’s why he knew so much about its powers. I guess you and I, Doc, weren’t so sensitive—if you want to believe in telepathy.”

“I have to,” Copper sighed. “Dr. Rhine of Duke University has shown that it exists, shown that some are much more sensitive than others.”

“Well, if you want to learn a lot of details, go listen in on Blair’s broadcast. He’s driven most of the boys out of the Ad Building; Kinner’s rattling pans like coal going down a chute. When he can’t rattle a pan, he shakes ashes.

“By the way, Commander, what are we going to do this spring, now the planes are out of it?”

Garry sighed. “I’m afraid our expedition is going to be a loss. We cannot divide our strength now.”

“It won’t be a loss—if we continue to live, and come out of this,” Copper promised him. “The find we’ve made, if we can get it under control, is important enough. The cosmic ray data, magnetic work, and atmospheric work won’t be greatly hindered.”

Garry laughed mirthlessly. “I was just thinking of the radio broadcasts. Telling half the world about the wonderful results of our exploration flights, trying to fool men like Byrd and Ellsworth back home there that we’re doing something.”

Copper nodded gravely. “They’ll know something’s wrong. But men like that have judgment enough to know we wouldn’t do tricks without some sort of reason, and will wait for our return to judge us. I think it comes to this: men who know enough to recognize our deception will wait for our return. Men who haven’t discretion and faith enough to wait will not have the experience to detect any fraud. We know enough of the conditions here to put through a good bluff.”

“Just so they don’t send ‘rescue’ expeditions,” Garry prayed. “When—if—we’re ever ready to come out, we’ll have to send word to Captain Forsythe to bring a stock of magnetos with him when he comes down. But—never mind that.”

“You mean if we don’t come out?” asked Barclay. “I was wondering if a nice running account of an eruption or an earthquake via radio—with a swell windup by using a stick of decanite under the microphone—would help. Nothing, of course, will entirely keep people out. One of those swell, melodramatic ‘last-man-alive-scenes’ might make ’em go easy though.”

Garry smiled with genuine humor. “Is everybody in camp trying to figure that out too?”

Copper laughed. “What do you think, Garry? We’re confident we can win out. But not too easy about it, I guess.”

Clark grinned up from the dog he was petting into calmness. “Confident, did you say, Doc?”

VIII

Blair moved restlessly around the small shack. His eyes jerked and quivered in vague, fleeting glances at the four men with him; Barclay, six feet tall and weighing over 190 pounds; McReady, a bronze giant of a man; Dr. Copper, short, squatly powerful; and Benning, five-feet-ten of wiry strength.

Blair was huddled up against the far wall of the East Cache cabin, his gear piled in the middle of the floor beside the heating stove, forming an island between him and the four men. His bony hands clenched and fluttered, terrified. His pale eyes wavered uneasily as his bald, freckled head darted about in birdlike motion.

“I don’t want anybody coming here. I’ll cook my own food,” he snapped nervously. “Kinner may be human now, but I don’t believe it. I’m going to get out of here, but I’m not going to eat any food you send me. I want cans. Sealed cans.”

“O.K., Blair, we’ll bring ’em tonight,” Barclay promised. “You’ve got coal, and the fire’s started. I’ll make a last—” Barclay started forward.

Blair instantly scurried to the farthest corner. “Get out! Keep away from me, you monster!” the little biologist shrieked, and tried to claw his way through the wall of the shack. “Keep away from me—keep away—I won’t be absorbed—I won’t be—”

Barclay relaxed and moved back. Dr. Copper shook his head. “Leave him alone, Bar. It’s easier for him to fix the thing himself. We’ll have to fix the door, I think—”

The four men let themselves out. Efficiently, Benning and Barclay fell to work. There were no locks in Antarctica; there wasn’t enough privacy to make them needed. But powerful screws had been driven in each side of the door frame, and the spare aviation control cable, immensely strong, woven steel wire, was rapidly caught between them and drawn taut. Barclay went to work with a drill and a keyhole saw. Presently he had a trap cut in the door through which goods could be passed without unlashing the entrance. Three powerful hinges from a stock-crate, two hasps and a pair of three-inch cotter-pins made it proof against opening from the other side.

Blair moved about restlessly inside. He was dragging something over to the door with panting gasps and muttering, frantic curses. Barclay opened the hatch and glanced in, Dr. Copper peering over his shoulder. Blair had moved the heavy bunk against the door. It could not be opened without his cooperation now.