A Handful of Darkness Read online

  Corporal Tenner hurried across the ground towards the main building, as soon as he heard the wail of the emergency alarm.

  At the entrance to the building he stopped to take off his metal-cleated boots. Then he frowned. By the door were two safety mats instead of one.

  Well, it didn’t matter. They were both the same. He stepped on to one of the mats and waited. The surface of the mat sent a flow of high-frequency current through his feet and legs, killing any spores or seeds that might have clung to him while he was outside.

  He passed on into the building.

  A moment later Lieutenant Fulton hurried up to the door. He yanked off his hiking boots and stepped on to the first mat he saw.

  The mat folded over his feet.

  “Hey,” Fulton cried. “Let go!”

  He tried to pull his feet loose, but the mat refused to let go.

  Fulton became scared. He drew his gun, but he didn’t care to fire at his own feet.

  “Help!” he shouted.

  Two soldiers came running up. “What’s the matter, Lieutenant?”

  “Get this damn thing off me.”

  The soldiers began to laugh.

  “It’s no joke,” Fulton said, his face suddenly white. “It’s breaking my feet! It’s—”

  He began to scream. The soldiers grabbed frantically at the mat. Fulton fell, rolling and twisting, still screaming. At last the soldiers managed to get a corner of the mat loose from his feet.

  Fulton’s feet were gone. Nothing but limp bone remained, already half-dissolved.

  “Now we know,” Hall said grimly. “It’s a form of organic life.”

  Commander Morrison turned to Corporal Tenner. “You saw two mats when you came into the building?”

  “Yes, Commander. Two. I stepped on—on one of them. And came in.”

  “You were lucky. You stepped on the right one.”

  “We’ve got to be careful,” Hall said. “We’ve got to watch for duplicates. Apparently it, whatever it is, imitates objects it finds. Like a chameleon. Camouflage.”

  “Two,” Stella Morrison murmured, looking at the two vases of flowers, one at each end of her desk. “It’s going to be hard to tell. Two towels, two vases, two chairs. There may be whole rows of things that are all right. All multiples legitimate except one.”

  “That’s the trouble. I didn’t notice anything unusual. in the lab. There’s nothing odd about another microscope. It blended right in.”

  The Commander drew away from the identical vases of flowers. “How about those? Maybe one is—whatever they are.”

  “There’s two of a lot of things. Natural pairs. Two boots. Clothing. Furniture. I didn’t notice that extra chair in my room. Equipment. It’ll be impossible to be sure. And sometimes—”

  The vidscreen lit. Vice-Commander Wood’s features formed.

  “Stella, another casualty.”

  “Who is it this time?”

  “An officer dissolved. All but a few buttons and his blast pistol—Lieutenant Dodds.”

  “That makes three,” Commander Morrison said.

  “If it’s organic, there ought to be some way we can destroy it,” Hall muttered. “We’ve already blasted a few, apparently killed them. They can be hurt! But we don’t know how many more there are. We’ve destroyed five or six. Maybe it’s an infinitely divisible substance. Some kind of protoplasm.”

  “And meanwhile—?”

  “Meanwhile we’re all at its mercy. Or their mercy. It’s our lethal life form, all right. That explains why we found everything else harmless. Nothing could compete with a form like this. We have mimic forms of our own, of course. Insects, plants. And there’s the twisty slug On Venus. But nothing that goes this far.”

  “It can be killed, though. You said so yourself. That means we have a chance.”

  “If it can be found.” Hall looked around the room. Two walking-capes hung by the door. Had there been two a moment before?

  He rubbed his forehead wearily. “We’ve got to try to find some sort of poison or corrosive agent, something that’ll destroy them wholesale. We can’t just sit and wait for them to attack us. We need something we can spray. That’s the way we got the twisty slugs.”

  The Commander gazed past him, rigid.

  He turned to follow her gaze. “What is it?”

  “I never noticed two brief-cases in the corner over there. There was only one before—I think.” She shook her head in bewilderment. “How are we going to know? This business is getting me “You need a good stiff drink.”

  She brightened. “That’s an idea. But—”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t want to touch anything. There’s no way to tell.” She fingered the blast gun at her waist. “I keep wanting to use it, on everything.”

  “Panic reaction. Still, we are being picked off, one by one.”

  Captain Unger got the emergency call over his headphones. He stopped work at once, gathered the specimens he had collected in his arms, and hurried back towards the bucket.

  It was parked closer than he remembered. He stopped, puzzled.

  There it was, the bright little cone-shaped car with its treads firmly planted in the soft soil, its door open.

  Unger hurried up to it, carrying his specimens carefully. He opened the storage hatch in the back and lowered his armload. Then he went around to the front and slid in behind the controls.

  He turned the switch. But the motor did not come on. That was strange. While he was trying to figure it out, he noticed something that gave him a start.

  A few hundred feet away, among the trees was a second bucket, just like the one he was in. And that was where he remembered having parked his car. Of course, he was in the bucket. Somebody else had come looking for specimens, and this bucket belonged to him.

  Unger started to get out again.

  The door closed around him. The seat folded up over his head. The dashboard became plastic and oozed. He gasped—he was suffocating. He struggled to get out, flailing and twisting. There was wetness all around him, a bubbling, flowing wetness, warm like flesh.

  “Glub.” His head was covered His body was covered. The bucket was turning to liquid. He tried to pull his hands free but they would not come.

  And then the pain began. He was being dissolved. All at once he realized what the liquid was.

  Acid. Digestive acid. He was in a stomach.

  “Don’t look!” Gail Thomas cried.

  “Why not?” Corporal Hendricks swam towards her, grinning.

  “Why can’t I look?”

  “Because I’m going to get out.”

  The sun shone down on the lake. It glittered and danced on the water. All around huge moss-covered trees rose up, great silent columns among the flowering vines and bushes.

  Gail climbed up on the bank, shaking water from her, throwing her hair back out of her eyes. The woods were silent. There was no sound except the lapping of the waves. They were a long way from the unit camp.

  “When can I look?” Hendricks demanded, swimming around in a circle, his eyes shut.

  “Soon.” Gail made her way into the trees, until she came to the place where she had left her uniform. She could feel the warm sun glowing against her bare shoulders and arms. Sitting down in the grass, she picked up her tunic and leggings.

  She brushed the leaves and bits of tree bark from her tunic and began to pull it over her head.

  In the water, Corporal Hendricks waited patiently, continuing in his circle. Time passed. There was no sound. He opened his eyes. Gail was nowhere in sight.

  “Gail?” he called.

  It was very quiet.

  “Gail!”

  No answer.

  Corporal Hendricks swam rapidly to the bank. He pulled himself out of the water. One leap carried him to his own uniform, neatly piled at the edge. of the lake. He grabbed up his blaster.

  “Gail!”

  The woods were silent. There was no sound. He stood, looking around him, frown
ing. Gradually, a cold fear began to numb him, in spite of the warm sun.

  “Gail! GAIL!”

  And still there was only silence.

  Commander Morrison was worried. “We’ve got to act,” she said. “We can’t wait. Ten lives lost already from thirty encounters. One-third is too high a percentage.”

  Hall looked up from his work. “Anyhow, now we know what we’re up against. It’s a form of protoplasm, with infinite versatility.” He lifted the spray tank. “I think this will give us an idea of how many exist.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A compound of arsenic and hydrogen in gas form. Arsine.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  Hall locked his helmet into place. His voice came through the Commander’s earphones. “I’m going to release this throughout the lab. I think there are a lot of them in here, more than anywhere else.”

  “Why here?”

  “This is where all samples and specimens were originally brought, where the first one of them was encountered. I think they came in with the samples, or as the samples, and then infiltrated through the rest of the buildings.”

  The Commander locked her own helmet into place. Her four guards did the same. “Arsine is fatal to human beings, isn’t it?”

  Hall nodded. “We’ll have to be careful. We can use it in here for a limited test. but that’s about all.”

  He adjusted the flow of oxygen inside his helmet.

  “What’s your test supposed to prove?” she wanted to know.

  “If it shows anything at all, it should give us an idea of how extensively they’ve infiltrated. We’ll know better what we’re up against. This may be more serious than we realize!

  “How do you mean?” she asked, fixing her own oxygen flow.

  “There are a hundred people in this unit on Planet Blue. As it stands now, the worst that can happen is that they’ll get all of us, one by one. But that’s nothing. Units of a hundred are lost every day of the week. It’s a risk whoever is first to land on a planet must take. In the final analysis, it’s relatively unimportant.”

  “Compared to what?”

  “If they are infinitely divisible, then we’re going to have to think twice about leaving here. It would be better to stay and get picked off one by one than to run the risk of carrying any of them back to the system.”

  She looked at him. “Is that what you’re trying to find out—whether they’re infinitely divisible?”

  “I’m trying to find out what we’re up against. Maybe there are only a few of them. Or maybe they’re everywhere.” He waved a hand around the laboratory. “Maybe half the things in this room are not what we think they are… It’s bad when they attack us. It would be worse if they didn’t.”

  “Worse?” The Commander was puzzled.

  “Their mimicry is perfect. Of inorganic objects, at least. I looked through one of them, Stella, when it was imitating my microscope. It enlarged, adjusted, reflected, just like a regular microscope. It’s a form of mimicry that surpasses anything we’ve ever imagined. It carries down below the surface, into the actual elements of the object imitated.”

  “You mean one of them could slip back to Terra along with us? In the form of clothing or a piece of lab equipment?” She shuddered.

  “We assume they’re some sort of protoplasm. Such malleability suggests a simple original form—and that suggests binary fission. If that’s so, then there may be no limit to their ability to reproduce. The dissolving properties make me think of the simple unicellular protozoa.”

  “Do you think they’re intelligent?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not.” Hall lifted the spray. “In any case, this should tell us their extent. And, to some degree, corroborate my notion that they’re basic enough to reproduce by simple division—the worst thing possible, from our standpoint.

  “Here goes,” Hall said.

  He held the spray tightly against him, depressed the trigger, aimed the nozzle slowly around the lab. The Commander and the four guards stood silently behind him. Nothing moved. The sun shone in through the windows, reflecting from the culture dishes and equipment.

  After a moment he let the trigger up again.

  “I didn’t see anything,” Commander Morrison said. “Are you sure you did anything?”

  “Arsine is colourless. But don’t loosen your helmet. It’s fatal. And don’t move.”

  They stood waiting.

  For a time nothing happened. Then—

  “Good God!” Commander Morrison exclaimed.

  At the far end of the lab a slide cabinet wavered suddenly. It oozed, buckling and pitching. It lost its shape completely—a homogeneous jelly-like mass perched on top of the table. Abruptly it flowed down the side of the table on to the floor, wobbling as it went.

  “Over there! “

  A bunsen burner melted and flowed along beside it. All around the room objects were in motion. A great glass retort folded up into itself and settled down into a blob. A rack of test tubes, a shelf of chemicals…

  “Look out!” Hall cried, stepping back.

  A huge bell jar dropped with a soggy splash in front of him. It was a single large cell, all right. He could dimly make out the nucleus, the cell wall, the hard vacuoles suspended in the cytoplasm.

  Pipettes, tongs, a mortar, all were flowing now. Half the equipment in the room was in motion. They had imitated almost everything there was to imitate. For every microscope there was a mimic. For every tube and jar and bottle and flask…

  One of the guards had his blaster out. Hall knocked it down. “Don’t fire! Arsine is inflammable. Let’s get out of here. We know what we wanted to know.”

  They pushed the laboratory door open quickly and made their way out into the corridor. Hall slammed the door behind them, bolting it tightly.

  “It is bad, then?” Commander Morrison asked.

  “We haven’t got a chance. The arsine disturbed them; enough of it might even kill them. But we haven’t got that much arsine. And, if we could flood the planet, we wouldn’t be able to use our blasters.”

  “Suppose we left the planet.”

  “We can’t take the chance of carrying them back to the system.”

  “If we stay here we’ll be absorbed, dissolved, one by one,” the Commander protested.

  “We could have arsine brought in. Or some other poison that might destroy them. But it would destroy most of the life on the planet along with them. There wouldn’t be much left.”

  “Then we’ll have to destroy all life-forms! If there’s no other way of doing it we’ve got to burn the planet clean. Even if there wouldn’t be a thing left but a dead world.”

  They looked at each other.

  “I’m going to call the System Monitor,” Commander Morrison said. “I’m going to get the unit off here, out of danger—all that are left, at least. That poor girl by the lake…” She shuddered. “After everyone’s out of here, we can work out the best way of cleaning up this planet.”

  “You’ll run the risk of carrying one of them back to Terra?”

  “Can they imitate us? Can they imitate living creatures? Higher life-forms?”.

  “Apparently not. They seem to be limited to inorganic objects.”

  The Commander smiled grimly. “Then we’ll go back without any inorganic material.”

  “But our clothes! They can imitate belts, gloves, boots—”

  “We’re not taking our clothes. We’re going back without anything. And I mean without anything at all.”

  Hall’s lips twitched. “I see.” He pondered. “It might work. Can you persuade the personnel to—to leave all their things behind? Everything they own?”

  “If it means their lives, I can order them to do it.”

  “Then it might be our one chance of getting away.”

  The nearest cruiser large enough to remove the remaining members of the unit was just two hours distance away. It was moving Terra-side again.

  Commander Morr
ison looked up from the vidscreen. “They want to know what’s wrong here.”

  “Let me talk.” Hall seated himself before the screen. The heavy features and gold braid of a Terran cruiser captain regarded him. “This is Major Lawrence Hall, from the Research Division of this unit.”

  “Captain Daniel Davis.” Captain Davis studied him without expression. “You’re having some kind of trouble, Major?”

  Hall licked his lips. “I’d rather not explain until we’re aboard, if you don’t mind.”

  ““Why not?”

  “Captain, you’re going to think we’re crazy enough as it is. We’ll discuss everything fully once we’re aboard.” He hesitated. “We’re going to board your ship naked.”

  The Captain raised an eyebrow. “Naked?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I see.” Obviously he didn’t.

  “When will you get here?”

  “In about two hours, I’d say.”

  “It’s now 13.00 by our schedule. You’ll be here by 15.00?”

  “At approximately that time,” the captain agreed.

  “We’ll be waiting for you. Don’t let any of your men out. Open one lock for us. We’ll board without any equipment. Just ourselves, nothing else. As soon as we’re aboard, remove the ship at once.”

  Stella Morrison leaned towards the screen. “Captain, would it be possible—for your men to—?”

  “We’ll land by robot control,” he assured her. “None of my men will be on deck. No one will see you.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “Not at all.” Captain Davis saluted. “We’ll see you in about two hours then, Commander.”

  “Let’s get everyone out on to the field,” Commander Morrison said. “They should remove their clothes here, I think, so there won’t be any objects on the field to come in contact with the ship.”

  Hall looked at her face. “Isn’t it worth it to save our lives?”

  Lieutenant Friendly bit his lips. “I won’t do it. I’ll stay here.”

  “You have to come.”

  “But, Major—”

  Hall looked at his watch. “It’s 14.50. The ship will be here any minute. Get your clothes off and get out on the landing field.”

  “Can’t I take anything at all?”

  “Nothing. Not even your blaster… They’ll give us clothes inside the ship. Come on! Your life depends, on this. Everyone else is doing it.”