The Thing Read online

  Macready stopped. "You hear something?"

  Copper strained, listened. "Yes. I think so." He shifted the light. "Mechanical."

  They followed the faint noise, which soon turned to an audible hissing. As they continued down the corridor the hiss became recognizable as static.

  There was a door blocking the end of the corridor. The steady sputtering came from the other side.

  Copper moved the light over the remnant of a door. Something had taken it apart. An axe protruded from the center, its head buried deeply in the wood.

  Macready put the gun aside, grabbed hold with both hands, and yanked until it came loose. The cutting edge was stained dark. He studied it briefly, looking to Copper for confirmation.

  The doctor said nothing, which was confirmation enough for Macready. There wasn't much blood on the axe, and what remained was frozen to a maroon crust.

  Putting down the axe he retrieved the gun, holding it a little tighter now as he tried the doorknob. It rotated and the door opened inward, but halted after moving only a few inches. The pilot put his shoulder against it and shoved, but it refused to budge further.

  "Blocked from the other side," he said quietly to Copper. He put his face to the slight opening. "Anybody in there?"

  There was no reply. Copper moved up against Macready's side and shouted past him. "We're Americans!"

  "Come to help you!" Macready added. His tongue moved against the inside of his mouth and he added, "We're alone!" Still no response. He steadied himself and leaned harder against the door.

  There was a creak. "I think it moved a little," he told the doctor. "Give me a hand."

  Copper added his own bulk to Macready's and pushed. The frozen floor of the passageway gave poor purchase to their boots. But by alternately hammering and pressing hard they managed to edge the door inward an inch at a time.

  Eventually they'd widened it enough for Macready to stick his head inside.

  "Give me the light." Copper handed it over and the pilot directed its beam inward. The static was loud now.

  "See anything, Mac?"

  "Yeah." The flashlight revealed banks of electronic instrumentation, most of it shattered. One console appeared to be the source of the steady humming. "Communications," he told the doctor; "Looks a lot like Sanders's bailiwick, anyway." He gave the light back to Copper, wedged himself into the opening, and pushed. The door gave another couple of inches.

  Copper followed him through, shining the light around the little room. Wind kissed their faces, unexpectedly brisk. He leaned back and picked out the holes in the ceiling.

  A Ganz lantern rested on a corner table. Macready dug out a match, struck it carefully and applied the flame to the lantern as he turned the control knob. The butane caught with a rush, forming a little circle of light.

  Lifting the lantern, he turned in a slow circle. The soft light picked out the top of a man's head, showing just above the back of a swivel chair.

  "Hey, Sweden," he called to the figure, "you okay?"

  The chair rocked slightly in the breeze from the ceiling. Both men moved slowly toward it. Macready put out an arm and halted the doctor a yard short of the chair, then poked at it with the shotgun.

  "Sweden?"

  Copper's gaze moved to the arm resting on one arm of the chair. A thin red line fell from it, a frozen crimson thread that ended in a pool of coagulated blood on the wooden floor.

  Macready poked the chair again, stepping around it. Copper moved around the other side.

  The man in the chair was lightly dressed, too lightly for the subfreezing temperature in the room. His eyes were open, fixed on something beyond their range of vision. His mouth was frozen agape. He seemed to have been petrified in the act of screaming.

  Macready's gaze traveled down the stiff body. The throat had been slit from ear to ear; both wrists were also slit. An old-fashioned straight razor lay in the man's lap. It was stained the same color as the axe that had been buried in the door. The razor seemed out of place in the communications room, an antique among solid-state technology. It had done its job, however.

  Macready reached past the wide-eyed corpse and flicked a switch. The radio's steady hiss died.

  There was a door in the far wall, which also turned out to be blocked from the opposite side. Macready rammed his shoulder angrily against it, banging it inward. He paused to catch his breath, and saw his companion gazing in fascination at the corpse and its multiple slashes.

  "My God," the doctor was muttering half to himself, "what in hell happened here?"

  "Come on, Copper," Macready growled at him impatient. "This one's blocked, too."

  "What?" The doctor stared blankly at the pilot, then snapped out of his daze and moved to help. Together they battered at the new obstacle until it moved enough to let them through.

  A metal storage cabinet had been used to brace the door. Beyond lay more blackness. The wind was stronger.

  Copper switched off the flashlight and took the lantern from Macready, freeing the latter to hold the gun with both hands. He held the lantern high, revealing a series of wooden steps leading downward.

  "Hey, Sweden!" Macready shouted into the blackness as be started downward.

  "They're not Swedish, goddamn it," Copper corrected him irritably. "They're Norwegian, Macre—"

  Something swished out of the darkness and smacked into his face . . .

  The lantern fell from his startled grasp and went bouncing down the stairs like a runaway jack o'lantern. Copper stumbled and felt himself falling as he flailed at something whipping around his head. Macready leaned back against a solid wall and extricated his own flashlight, holding it in one hand and the shotgun in the other as he tried to locate their assailant.

  But Copper had recovered his equilibrium and subdued his attacker. He held it up, letting the wrinkled paper flap in the breeze that carried it down the stairwell.

  Macready walked over and took the paper. The notations at its bottom were in Norwegian, but it wouldn't have made any real difference if they'd been Chinese ideographs.

  "Norwegian-of-the-Month, Doc. Harmless." He started to toss the centerfold away, thought better of it and pocketed it for detailed inspection later on.

  An embarrassed Copper self-consciously adjusted his clothing and descended the last couple of steps to recover the still burning lantern. He waited there until Macready had rejoined him. Together they started down the subterranean corridor.

  The support beams holding up the ceiling were wood. They were twisted and buckled from the steady pressure of the ice around them. This was a more glacially active area than the plateau where the American outpost was located.

  The recent conflagration that had seared the camp further strained the strength of the woodwork. They could hear it creaking and complaining around them as they made their way up the tunnel. Bits of ice and silt trickled down, landing in their hair and tickling their cheeks.

  A broken beam lay crossways ahead of them, blocking the tunnel. It still smouldered. Macready ducked to slip gingerly underneath, brushing it gently. A shower of fine debris rained from the arched ceiling.

  "Easy here, Doc. This one belongs in the roof, not on the floor."

  Copper crouched and passed under the beam. It groaned but held steady. They continued onward.

  "Hey!

  "Mac? Something wrong?" Copper whirled, shining the light toward his companion.

  Macready was searching the wall behind him. "Bumped into something. Didn't feel like wood. I thought it moved when I hit it. Holy shit." He grimaced.

  The arm was sticking out of the edge of a steel door set into the corridor wall. The elbow was about three feet off the ground. The door was shut tight. Fingers clutched a small welding torch.

  Copper leaned close, examining the trapped limb.

  "Watch it, Doc," Macready warned him. "Might still be gas running to that sucker."

  "I don't think so." Copper indicated the torch controls. "The switch is in the on po
sition, I think. I don't smell anything." He licked a finger, held it under the nozzle of the torch. "Nothing. Fuel burned or leaked out long ago."

  Macready tried the door. It was unlocked and unlike the previous two they'd had to wrestle with, this one opened easily. The arm dropped loosely to the floor. It wasn't attached to anything anymore, having been severed as well as held in place by the door. There was no sign of its former owner.

  That was about enough as far as Macready was concerned. He turned away and coughed, feeling his stomach play ferris wheel inside his belly. The dips and bobs of a wind-tossed helicopter didn't bother him, but this . . .

  "Christ," Copper mumbled. He peered into the new passageway, raising the lantern high. "Let's see where this one goes."

  A short walk brought them to another door. Norwegian lettering ran across the wood at eye level. Macready readied the shotgun and gave the door a kick.

  At least the doors were becoming more cooperative. This one swung obediently inward, creaking to a stop. Dozens of papers were flying around the room beyond the door, fat white moths shoved around by the wind pouring through gaping holes in the roof. It was difficult to determine the purpose of the room because it was a total wreck.

  Macready played his flashlight over the carnage.

  "Laboratory," Copper announced as the beam traveled across broken beakers and fragmented test tubes. A fine microscope lay on its side on the floor, near a cracked workbench. Other equipment was scattered as if by a tornado. An expensive oscilloscope sat undamaged on a shelf, save for the fact that something had punched out its single cyclopean eye.

  "Hey, look at this, Doc." Copper turned. Macready's flashlight had picked out a gray metal box attached to a nearby wall. A single unbroken lens pointed toward the floor. "Portable video camera."

  Copper glanced up at it, then started working his way through the mess toward a tipped-over filing cabinet. Its drawers had been pulled out, mute testimony to the casual destruction that had invaded this room as well as to the source of all the paper fluttering around their heads.

  Other papers lay beneath weights or overturned equipment on the main work table. He shuffled through them, searching hopefully rather than realistically for the clue that might explain how catastrophe had overwhelmed this station.

  Macready continued to examine the video camera, wishing Sanders was with them. "Anything?" he asked without turning.

  Copper shook his head regretfully. "All in Norwegian, I'm afraid." He pulled out a couple of sheets, squinting at them in the weak light. "No, here's a couple in German."

  "So what?"

  "I can read a little German."

  Macready turned to him and spoke eagerly. "Yeah? What's it say?"

  The doctor continued to inspect the papers his lips moving as he followed the long words. ". . . allgegenwertig glaci . . ." He broke off and looked up, disappointed. "It's a tract on the movement of pressure ridges, I'm afraid."

  "Wonderful," said, Macready sarcastically. "That's a great help." Copper carefully aligned the sheets and began adding selected reams of additional material. The pilot frowned.

  "Now what are you doing? Nobody back at base can read that stuff, either."

  "I know." He bent to retrieve a packet of paper bound in red plastic. "But this could be important work. It looks like six people have died for it. Might as well bring it back before it blows away. If the positions were reversed I'd want some other scientist to do the same for me."

  Macready forbore from mentioning that Copper was only a GP, not a scientist. "Okay," he said impatiently, "but it's getting late. Hurry it up. I'm going to check out the last few rooms." He turned and exited.

  Copper continued to gather the papers, stacking them neatly in one arm. Perhaps some Norwegian bureau or university would be able to make sense of them.

  Scattered among the rubble was a pocket tape recorder. Several cassettes lay strewn across the floor nearby. He picked one up. It was hand-marked. Unless it was part of somebody's private collection, that meant it probably contained scientific notes and not prerecorded music.

  Something behind him . . . he whirled. No. Nothing. Easy, Copper, he told himself. This place is too cold even for ghosts. He popped one of the tapes into the recorder and tried fiddling with the controls.

  Macready bulled his way into another room and was greeted with a shower of splinters and cracked ice. Grumbling, he brushed the debris from his parka as he angled the flashlight upward. Here too, the ceiling was a mess. He lowered the light and started inspecting the interior.

  Copper found the playback switch. A casual Norwegian voice droned away in pedantic, unemotional tones. He fast forwarded the instrument. The voice was the same and so was the pattern.

  A distant shout broke his concentration: Macready.

  "Copper, come here!"

  Now what, he wondered? Found the owner of the arm they'd encountered in the other hall, maybe. He shut off the recorder and rushed out of the room.

  Macready hadn't gone far. Copper had to squeeze his greater bulk through the narrow opening leading to the next room and drew more of the dirty little avalanche that had greeted the pilot's initial entrance.

  "Careful," Macready warned him with a gesture toward the ceiling. "This one's ready to go."

  The doctor flicked debris from his arms and walked over to join his companion. Macready was standing next to a huge block of ice. A glance showed that it hadn't fallen from the ceiling. Copper was no geologist, but he'd helped Norris often enough to know that this mass was composed of old ice, not newly formed surface material.

  Automatically his orderly mind made approximations. The block was about fifteen feet long and six wide, maybe four high. It lay on the floor, too massive to rest on any table. The edges showed signs of recent melting, a process halted by the freezing temperatures that had invaded the camp.

  Other than its size, it was unremarkable. "Block of ice," he said to Macready. "So what?"

  Macready leaned over the block, shining his flashlight downward. "Check this out."

  Copper moved nearer. The center of the block had been thawed or scraped out. It looked as if someone had tried to make the block into a huge frozen bathtub.

  "What d'you make of this?"

  Copper shook his head, thoroughly puzzled. "Beats the hell out of me, Mac. Glaciology's not my department. Anything else here?"

  "Don't know yet. This caught my eye right off." He turned away from the block, searching with the light until it caught a large metal cabinet standing against a wall. Closer inspection revealed several Polaroid prints taped to its front. They walked over to it. The pictures showed men at work and play around the compound.

  "At least something's intact," he murmured. He put the shotgun carefully aside and held the flashlight in his mouth as he used both hands to try to open the cabinet.

  The latch gave slightly, but the doors refused to come apart. Stuck, he decided. Perhaps frozen. He pulled again. Dust trickled down from the top of the cabinet. The partially collapsed ceiling was slightly blocking the tops of the doors. He yanked again. Something groaned overhead.

  Copper took a step back, eyeing the roof warily. "Watch it, Mac."

  Macready readied himself, shot a cursory glance at the unstable ceiling, and pulled hard. Too hard. The doors flew open and he stumbled backward, fighting for balance.

  Large chunks of insulation and wood tumbled from the roof. Macready coughed and waved at the dust as he made his way back toward the cabinet.

  The contents were a disappointment, not that he'd expected to find much. His struggle with the doors produced no revelations. Some of the shelves were empty. Others supported small scientific instruments, several programmable calculators, racks of slides, a few unbroken beakers, and some glass tubing.

  His flashlight focused on a large photograph taped to the inside of one door

  Five men filled the picture. They stood arm in arm, all smiles, holding glasses raised in a mutual toast. It was an exterio
r shot, taken somewhere outside the camp.

  In front of them on the snow lay the block of ice. The photo made it appear larger. Perhaps some of it had melted in transit, Macready decided. It was obviously set out for the benefit of the camera, though he couldn't decide from looking at the photo whether the men were toasting it or each other.

  He looked over his shoulder at the block of ice, back at the photo, then at the ice again. There was no doubt in his mind that the block in the picture and the one resting five feet away were one and the same. The dimensions of the one in the picture might be slightly greater but the proportions were identical.

  He carefully untaped the photo and slipped it into a coat pocket, then reclosed the cabinet doors.

  As he did so more debris tumbled from the ceiling; wood, plaster, fiberglass insulation, and something else. Something cold but still soft. Macready screamed; Copper gaped.

  The corpse was missing an arm, but was still heavy enough to knock Macready down . . .

  The howling was sharp and melodic. It penetrated much of the American compound, reaching the rec room via connecting corridors and the few speakers inside.

  Beneath one of the card tables, the injured husky perked up his ears. The howling degenerated into lyrics, something having to do with werewolves in London. Once the howling had metamorphosed into human speech, the dog shifted its attention elsewhere.

  Nearby, a ball of light danced across a video screen, beckoning would-be players to manipulate it. There were no takers in the room just then and the dog could only trot disinterestedly past.

  The howling was loudest in the kitchen, blasting from a cassette deck vibrating on a shelf above a multiburner stove. Nauls skated past, kicking the door of the massive walk-in freezer shut with spinning steel wheels. The large chunk of corned beef he'd extracted from the freezer was slam-dunked onto the big butcher block. Pots and pans steamed up the air and the aroma filling the room was thick with pepper and bay leaf.

  Nauls rolled easily from one station to another, keeping time to the music. He used a spoon to sample the contents of one cauldron, frowned, added something from a couple of large shakers, then tasted it again. This time he smiled.