S Is for Space Read online

  That wasn't all. Smith needed little air. What air he had he seemed to acquire by an osmotic process through his skin. And he used every molecule of it. No waste.

  "And," finished Rockwell, "eventually Smith's heart might even take vacations from beating, entirely!"

  "Then he'd be dead," said McGuire.

  “To you and I, yes. To Smith—maybe. Just maybe. Think of it, McGuire. Collectively, in Smith, we have a self-purifying blood stream demanding no replenishment but an interior one for months, having little breakdown and no elimination of wastes whatsoever because every molecule is utilized, self-evolving, and fatal to any and all microbic life. All this, and Hartley speaks of degeneration!"

  Hartley was irritated when he heard of the discoveries. But he still insisted that Smith was degenerating. Dangerous.

  McGuire tossed his two cents in. "How do we know that this isn't some super microscopic disease that annihilates all other bacteria while it works on its victim. After all—malarial fever is sometimes used surgically to cure syphilis; why not a new bacillus that conquers all?"

  "Good point,” said Rockwell. "But we're not sick, are we?"

  "It may have to incubate in our bodies."

  "A typical old-fashioned doctor's response. No matter what happens to a man, he's 'sick'—if he varies from the norm. That's your idea, Hartley," declared Rockwell, "not mine. Doctors aren't satisfied unless they diagnose and label each case. Well, I think that Smith's healthy; so healthy you're afraid of him.”

  "You're crazy," said McGuire.

  "Maybe. But I don't think Smith needs medical interference. He's working out his own salvation. You believe he's degenerating. I say he's growing.'*

  "Look at Smith's skin," complained McGuire.

  "Sheep in wolfs clothing. Outside, the hard, brittle epidermis. Inside, ordered regrowth, change. Why? I'm on the verge of knowing. These changes inside Smith are so violent that they need a shell to protect their action. And as for you. Hartley, answer me truthfully, when you were young, were you afraid of insects, spiders, things like that?"

  "Yes."

  "There you are. A phobia. A phobia you use against Smith. That explains your distaste for Smith's change."

  In the following weeks, Rockwell went back over Smith's life carefully. He visited the electronics lab where Smith had been employed and fallen ill. He probed the room where Smith had spent the first weeks of his "illness" with Hartley in attendance. He examined the machinery there. Something about radiations

  While he was away from the sanitarium, Rockwell locked Smith tightly, and had McGuire guard the door in case Hartley got any unusual ideas.

  The details of Smith's twenty-three years were simple. He had worked for five years in the electronics lab, experimenting. He had never been seriously sick in his life.

  And as the days went by Rockwell took long walks in the dry-wash near the sanitarium, alone. It gave him time to think and solidify the incredible theory that was becoming a unit in his brain.

  And one afternoon he paused by a night-blooming jasmine outside the sanitarium, reached up, smiling, and plucked a dark shining object off of a high branch. He looked at the object and tucked it in his pocket. Then he walked into the sanitarium.

  He summoned McGuire in off the veranda. McGuire came. Hartley trailed behind, threatening, complaining. The three of them sat in the living quarters of the building.

  Rockwell told them.

  "Smith's not diseased. Germs can't live in him. He's not inhabited by banshees or weird monsters who've ‘taken over' his body. I mention this to show I've left no stone untouched. I reject all normal diagnoses of Smith. I offer the most important, the most easily accepted possibility of—delayed hereditary mutation."

  "Mutation?" McGuire's voice was funny.

  Rockwell held up the shiny dark object in the light.

  “I found this on a bush in the garden. It'll illustrate my theory to perfection. After studying Smith's symptoms, examining his laboratory, and considering several of these"—he twirled the dark object in his fingers— "I'm certain. It's metamorphosis. It's regeneration, change, mutation after birth. Here. Catch. This is Smith."

  He tossed the object to Hartley. Hartley caught it.

  "This is the chrysalis of a caterpillar," said Hartley.

  Rockwell nodded. "Yes, it is."

  "You don't mean to infer that Smith's a— chrysalis?”

  “I'm positive of it," replied Rockwell.

  Rockwell stood over Smith's body in the darkness of evening. Hartley and McGuire sat across the patient's room, quiet, listening. Rockwell touched Smith softly. "Suppose that there's more to life than just being born, living seventy years, and dying. Suppose there's one more great step up in man's existence, and Smith has been the first of us to make that step.

  "Looking at a caterpillar, we see what we consider a static object. But it changes to a butterfly. Why? There are no final theories explaining it. It's progress, mainly. The pertinent thing is that a supposedly unchangeable object weaves itself into an intermediary object, wholly unrecognizable, a chrysalis, and emerges a butterfly. Outwardly the chrysalis looks dead. This is misdirection. Smith has misdirected us, you see. Outwardly, dead. Inwardly, fluids whirlpool, reconstruct, rush about with wild purpose. From grub to mosquito, from caterpillar to butterfly, from Smith to—?"

  "Smith a chrysalis?" McGuire laughed heavily.

  "Yes."

  "Humans don't work that way."

  "Stop it, McGuire. This evolutionary step's too great for your comprehension. Examine this body and tell me anything else. Skin, eyes, breathing, blood flow. Weeks of assimilating food for his brittle hibernation. Why did he eat all that food, why did he need that x-liquid in his body except for his metamorphosis? And the cause of it all was—eradiations. Hard radiations from Smith's laboratory equipment. Planned or accidental I don't know. It touched some part of his essential gene-structure, some part of the evolutionary structure of man that wasn't scheduled for working for thousands of years yet, perhaps."

  "Do you think that some day all men—?"

  "The maggot doesn't stay in the stagnant pond, the grub in the soil, or the caterpillar on a cabbage leaf. They change, spreading across space in waves.

  "Smith's the answer to the problem 'What happens next for man, where do we go from here?' We're faced with the blank wall of the universe and the fatality of living in that universe, and man as he is today is not prepared to go against the universe. The least exertion tires man, overwork kills his heart, disease his body. Maybe Smith will be prepared to answer the philosophers' problem of life's purpose. Maybe he can give it new purpose.

  "Why, we're just petty insects, all of us, fighting on a pinhead planet. Man isn't meant to remain here and be sick and small and weak, but he hasn't discovered the secret of the greater knowledge yet.

  "But—change man. Build your perfect man. Your— your superman, if you like. Eliminate petty mentality, give him complete physiological, neurological, psychological control of himself: give him clear, incisive channels of thought, give him an indefatigable blood stream, a body that can go months without outside food, that can adjust to any climate anywhere and kill any disease. Release man from the shackles of flesh and flesh misery and then he's no longer a poor, petty little man afraid to dream because he knows his frail body stands between him and the fulfillment of dreams, then he's ready to wage war, the only war worth waging—the conflict of man reborn and the whole confounded universe!"

  Breathless, voice hoarse, heart pounding, Rockwell tensed over Smith, placed his hands admiringly, firmly on the cold length of the chrysalis and shut his eyes. The power and drive and belief in Smith surged through him. He was right. He was right. He knew he was right. He opened his eyes and looked at McGuire and Hartley who were mere shadows in the dim shielded light of the room.

  After a silence of several seconds. Hartley snuffed out his cigarette. "I don't believe that theory."

  McGuire said, "How do you know
Smith's not just a mess of jelly inside? Did you X-ray him?"

  "I couldn't risk it, it might interfere with his change, like the sunlight did."

  "So he's going to be a superman? What will he look like?"

  "We'll wait and see."

  "Do you think he can hear us talking about him now?”

  "Whether or not he can, there's one thing certain— we're sharing a secret we weren't intended to know. Smith didn't plan on myself and McGuire entering the case. He had to make the most of it. But a superman doesn't like people to know about him. Humans have a nasty way of being envious, jealous, and hateful. Smith knew he wouldn't be safe if found out. Maybe that explains your hatred, too. Hartley."

  They all remained silent, listening. Nothing sounded. Rockwell's blood whispered in his temples, that was all. There was Smith, no longer Smith, a container labeled Smith, its contents unknown.

  "If what you say is true," said Hartley, "then indeed we should destroy him. Think of the power over the world he would have. And if it affects his brain as I think it will affect it—he'll try to kill us when he escapes because we are the only ones who know about him. He'll hate us for prying."

  Rockwell said it easily. "I'm not afraid."

  Hartley remained silent. His breathing was harsh and loud in the room.

  Rockwell came around the table, gesturing.

  "I think we'd better say good-night now, don't you?”

  The thin rain swallowed Hartley's car. Rockwell closed the door, instructed McGuire to sleep downstairs tonight on a cot fronting Smith's room, and then he walked upstairs to bed.

  Undressing, he had time to conjure over all the unbelievable events of the passing weeks. A superman. Why not? Efficiency, strength—

  He slipped into bed.

  When. When does Smith emerge from his chrysalis? When?

  The rain drizzled quietly on the roof of the sanitarium.

  McGuire lay in the middle of the sound of rain and the earthquaking of thunder, slumbering on the cot, breathing heavy breaths. Somewhere, a door creaked, but McGuire breathed on. Wind gusted down the hall.

  McGuire granted and rolled over. A door closed softly and the wind ceased.

  Footsteps tread softly on the deep carpeting. Slow footsteps, aware and alert and ready. Footsteps. McGuire blinked his eyes and opened them.

  In the dim light a figure stood over him.

  Upstairs, a single light m the hall thrust down a yellow shaft near McGuire's cot.

  An odor of crashed insect filled the air. A hand moved. A voice started to speak.

  McGuire screamed.

  Because the hand that moved into the light was green.

  Green.

  "Smith!''

  McGuire flung himself ponderously down the hall, yelling.

  "He's walking! He can't walk, but he's walking!"

  The door rammed open under McGuire's bulk. Wind and rain shrieked in around him and he was gone into the storm, babbling.

  In the hall, the figure was motionless. Upstairs a door opened swiftly and Rockwell ran down the steps. The green hand moved back out of the light behind the figure's back.

  "Who is it?" Rockwell paused halfway.

  The figure stepped into the light.

  Rockwell's eyes narrowed.

  "Hartley! What are you doing back here?"

  "Something happened," said Hartley. "You'd better get McGuire. He ran out in the rain babbling like a fool."

  Rockwell kept his thoughts to himself. He searched Hartley swiftly with one glance and then ran down the hall and out into the cold wind.

  "McGuire! McGuire, come back you idiot!" The rain fell on Rockwell's body as he ran. He found McGuire about a hundred yards from the sanitarium, blubbering,

  "Smith—Smith's walking .. ." "Nonsense. Hartley came back, that's all."

  "I saw a green hand. It moved.”

  "You dreamed."

  "No. No." McGuire's face was flabby pale, with water on it. "I saw a green hand, believe me. Why did Hartley come back? He—"

  At the mention of Hartley's name, full comprehension came smashing to Rockwell. Fear leaped through his mind, a mad blur of warning, a jagged edge of silent screaming for help.

  "Hartley!"

  Shoving McGuire abruptly aside, Rockwell twisted and leaped back toward the sanitarium, shouting. Into the hall, down the hall—

  Smith's door was broken open.

  Gun in hand, Hartley was in the center of the room. He turned at the noise of Rockwell's running. They both moved simultaneously. Hartley fired his gun and Rockwell pulled the light switch.

  Darkness. Flame blew across the room, profiling Smith's rigid body like a flash photo. Rockwell jumped at the flame. Even as he jumped, shocked deep, realizing why Hartley had returned. In that instant before the lights blinked out Rockwell had a glimpse of Hartley's fingers.

  They were a brittle mottled green.

  Fists then. And Hartley collapsing as the lights came on, and McGuire, dripping wet at the door, shook out the words, "Is—is Smith killed?"

  Smith wasn't harmed. The shot had passed over him.

  "This fool, this fool," cried Rockwell, standing over Hartley's numbed shape. "Greatest case in history and he tries to destroy it!"

  Hartley came around, slowly. "I should've known. Smith warned you."

  "Nonsense, he—" Rockwell stopped, amazed. Yes. That sudden premonition crashing into his mind. Yes. Then he glared at Hartley. "Upstairs with you. You're being locked in for the night. McGuire, you, too. So you can watch him."

  McGuire croaked. "Hartley's hand. Look at it. It's green. It was Hartley in the hall—not Smith!"

  Hartley stared at his fingers. "Pretty, isn't it?" he said, bitterly. "I was in range of those radiations for a long time at the start of Smith's illness. I'm going to be a—creature—like Smith. It's been this way for several days. I kept it hidden. I tried not to say anything. Tonight, I couldn't stand it any longer, and I came back to destroy Smith for what he's done to me ..."

  A dry noise racked, dryly, splitting the air. The three of them froze.

  Three tiny flakes of Smith's chrysalis flicked up and then spiraled down to the floor.

  Instantly, Rockwell was to the table, and gaping.

  "It's starting to crack. From the collar-bone to the navel, a miscroscopic fissure! He'll be out of his chrysalis soon!"

  McGuire's jowls trembled. "And then what?"

  Hartley's words were bitter sharp. "We'll have a superman. Question: what does a superman look like? Answer: nobody knows."

  Another crust of flakes crackled open.

  McGuire shivered. "Will you try to talk to him?"

  "Certainly."

  "Since when do—butterflies—speak?"

  "Oh, Good God, McGuire!"

  With the two others securely imprisoned upstairs, Rockwell locked himself into Smith's room and bedded down on a cot, prepared to wait through the long wet night, watching, listening, thinking.

  Watching the tiny flakes flicking off the crumbling skin of chrysalis as the Unknown within struggled quietly outward.

  Just a few more hours to wait. The rain slid over the house, pattering. What would Smith look like? A change in the earcups perhaps for greater hearing; extra eyes, maybe; a change in the skull structure, the facial setup, the bones of the body, the placement of organs, the texture of skin, a million and one changes.

  Rockwell grew tired and yet was afraid to sleep. Eyelids heavy, heavy. What if he was wrong? What if his theory was entirely disjointed? What if Smith was only so much moving jelly inside? What if Smith was mad, insane—so different that he'd be a world menace?

  No. No. Rockwell shook his head groggily. Smith was perfect. Perfect. There'd be no room for evil thought in Smith. Perfect.

  The sanitarium was death quiet. The only noise was the faint crackle of chrysalis flakes skimming to the hard floor ...

  Rockwell slept. Sinking into the darkness that blotted out the room as dreams moved in upon him. Dream
s in which Smith arose, walked in stiff, parched gesticulations and Hartley, screaming, wielded an ax, shining, again and again into the green armor of the creature and hacked it into liquid horror. Dreams in which McGuire ran babbling through a rain of blood. Dreams in which—

  Hot sunlight. Hot sunlight all over the room. It was morning. Rockwell rubbed his eyes, vaguely troubled by the fact that someone had raised the blinds. Someone had—he leaped! Sunlight! There was no way for the blinds to be up. They'd been down for weeks! He cried out.

  The door was open. The sanitarium was silent. Hardly daring to turn his head, Rockwell glanced at the table. Smith should have been lying there.

  He wasn't.

  There was nothing but sunlight on the table. That— and a few remnants of shattered chrysalis. Remnants.

  Brittle shards, a discarded profile cleft in two pieces, a shell segment that had been a thigh, a trace of arm, a splint of chest—these were the fractured remains of Smith!

  Smith was gone. Rockwell staggered to the table, crushed. Scrabbling like a child among the rattling papyrus of skin. Then he swung about, as if drunk, and swayed out of the room and pounded up the stairs, shouting:

  "Hartley! What did you do with him? Hartley! Did you think you could kill him, dispose of his body, and leave a few bits of shell behind to throw me off trail?"

  The door to the room where McGuire and Hartley had slept was locked. Fumbling, Rockwell unlocked it. Both McGuire and Hartley were there.

  "You're here," said Rockwell, dazed. "You weren't downstairs, then. Or did you unlock the door, come down, break in, kill Smith and—no, no."

  "What's wrong?"

  "Smith's gone! McGuire, did Hartley move out of this room?"

  "Not all night.'*

  "Then—there's only one explanation—Smith emerged from his chrysalis and escaped during the night! I'll never see him, I'll never get to see him, damn it! What a fool I was to sleep!"

  "That settles it!" declared Hartley. "The man's dangerous or he would have stayed and let us see him! God only knows what he is."

  "We've got to search, then. He can't be far off. We’ve got to search then! Quick now. Hartley. McGuire!"

  McGuire sat heavily down. "I won't budge. Let him find himself. I've had enough."