The Beasts in the Void Part 3

His face was pale and his hands twitched. "A boa-constrictor. Exactly like the one I killed four years ago on the Amazon. It came to the port and looked in at me."

"It must be your imagination."

"No. It was there. Let's turn back. Get out of this."

"I wish we could."

"You mean--?"

"I don't know where back is. We might just as well go as we are.

Changing course doesn't help if you don't know your directions. Our only hope is to drive on out of this cloud. If I turned I might go right back into it."

"Then one direction is as good as another?"

"That's right."

His mind wandered as he turned away. "I didn't know it would be like this," he muttered. "I thought it would be fun--sport. I thought we'd put on s.p.a.ce suits and go out and make a kill. I thought--"

"The s.p.a.ce suits are ready. Do you want to try it?"

He shuddered, his hanging jowls almost flapping. "You couldn't drag me out there."

The stuff is getting thicker in the s.h.i.+p.

Jane came into my cabin. She had an odd look on her face. She said, "There's a big tiger in the companionway."

I got up from my bunk and suddenly she seemed to realize what she'd said. She repeated it. Then she fell down in a faint. I put her in my bunk and looked out into the companionway. The sparkling fog glittered but there was no tiger.

When she came to, she didn't seem to know where she was. Then she smiled. "I must have been drinking too much," she said. Then she realized where she was. "But look where it got me? Into your bunk."

"Do you feel all right now?"

"I guess so. I can get up now. I _do_ have to get up, don't I?"

"I think you'd better."

After she left I did some thinking. The sparkling haze had been outside the s.h.i.+p and I'd seen a water buffalo through the port. Murdo had seen a boa-constrictor. Then the haze penetrated the hull and got inside the s.h.i.+p. And Jane had seen a tiger in the companionway.

Were they phantoms? Was Jane's tiger a tiger of the mind? Murdo swore his snake had been real and my buffalo left a mark on the port. I sat there trying to think. With the sparkling fog drifting around me. It seemed to be trying to tell me something.

Things grow worse. Today, at mess, Murdo was holding forth about a Plutonian ice bear he'd killed. I think he was trying to cover the gloom that has settled over us. Anyhow, he'd just got to the point where the bear was charging down on him when we heard the roar of thunder from outside. Maybe I'd better repeat that for the record. _We heard a roaring through the walls of the s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p. In the void._ Nothing goes through the walls of a s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p in the void but we all heard it and jumped to the port. And we all saw it.

An ice bear as big as ten of the largest that ever lived in the Plutonian ice flows. A huge ravening beast that rushed through the void at the s.h.i.+p and tried to tear the port out of its metal seat with teeth as big as the height of a man.

The women fell back, screaming. Keebler, in his usual stupor stared blankly as though not realizing what was going on. Kelvey looked to Murdo for guidance. When none came he crouched behind a chair.

Murdo fell back slowly, step by step as though his eyes were fastened to the quartz and it was hard to pull away. I don't remember what I did. Murdo was saying "My G.o.d--my G.o.d--my G.o.d," as though chanting a ritual. He tore his eyes from the sight and looked at me.

"You wanted big game, buster," I croaked. "There it is."

"But it can't be real. It _can't_!"

"Maybe not, but if that port gives I'll bet it won't be from vacuum pressure."

"Vacuum draws. It doesn't press," Kelvey babbled inanely, but n.o.body paid any attention to him.

The beast made two more charges on the s.h.i.+p, then drew back screaming in rage from a snapped tooth. And all around us, there in the s.h.i.+p, the sparkling fog glittered and tried to talk.

Two hours. The beast still rages in the void outside our s.h.i.+p.

Jane is dead. She was horribly mangled. I put her in her bunk and laid a blanket over her and now the blanket is soaked in her blood.

No one could have helped her. It happened in the lounge. She was in there alone. I was in the control room. I don't know where the rest were.

I was working uselessly with the controls when I heard a terrible scream mixed with a hideous snarling. I ran into the companionway and stared toward the lounge. Murdo appeared from somewhere and we were shouldering each other on the companion ladder. Murdo fell heavily.

Then we were both looking into the lounge.

It was too late to help Jane. We saw her there, still and b.l.o.o.d.y. A s.h.i.+ny 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--"

"d.a.m.n 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 pa.s.s. 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 s.p.a.ce; 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 G.o.d 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 s.h.i.+p, 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.