H L Gold (ed), page 14
Dane had seen him just once then—but long enough to be sure it was Harding—before he died again.
This time, it was in a drunken auto accident that seemed to be none of his fault, but left his body a mangled wreck.
It was almost dark when Dane dismissed the taxi at the false address, a mile from the entrance to the cemetery. He watched it turn back down the road, then picked up the valise with his camera and folding shovel. He shivered as he moved reluctantly ahead. War had proved that he would never be a brave man and the old fears of darkness and graveyards were still strong in him. But he had to know what the coffin contained now, if it wasn’t already too late.
It represented the missing link in his picture of the aliens. What happened to them during the period of regrowth? Did they revert to their natural form? Were they at all conscious while the body reshaped itself into wholeness? Dane had puzzled over it night after night, with no answer.
Nor could he figure how they could escape from the grave. Perhaps a man could force his way out of some of the coffins he had inspected. The soil would still be soft and loose in the grave and a lot of the coffins and the boxes around them were strong in appearance only. A determined creature that could exist without much air for long enough might make it. But there were other caskets that couldn’t be cracked, at least without the aid of outside help.
What happened when a creature that could survive even the poison of embalming fluids and the draining of all the blood woke up in such a coffin? Dane’s mind skitted from it, as always, and then came back to it reluctantly.
There were still accounts of corpses turned up with the nails and hair grown long in the grave. Could normal tissues stand the current tricks of the morticians to have life enough for such growth? The possibility was absurd. Those cases had to be aliens—ones who hadn’t escaped. Even they must die eventually in such a case—after weeks and monthsl It took time for hair to grow.
And there were stories of corpses that had apparently fought and twisted in their coffins still. What was it like for an alien then, going slowly mad while it waited for true death? How long did madness take?
He shivered again, but went steadily on while the cemetery fence appeared in the distance. He’d seen Blanding’s coffin —and the big, solid metal casket around it that couldn’t be cracked by any amount of effort and strength. He was sure the creature was still there, unless it had a confederate. But that wouldn’t matter. An empty coffin would also be proof.
Dane avoided the main gate, unsure about whether there would be a watchman or not. A hundred feet away, there was a tree near the ornamental spikes of the iron fence. He threw his bag over and began shinnying up. It was difficult, but he made it finally, dropping onto the soft grass beyond. There was the trace of the Moon at times through the clouds, but it hadn’t betrayed him, and there had been no alarm wire along the top of the fence.
He moved from shadow to shadow, his hair prickling along the base of his neck. Locating the right grave in the darkness was harder than he had expected, even with an occasional brief use of the small flashlight. But at last he found the marker that was serving until the regular monument could arrive.
His hands were sweating so much that it was hard to use the small shovel, but the digging of foxholes had given him experience and the ground was still soft from the gravediggers’ work. He stopped once, as the Moon came out briefly. Again, a sound in the darkness above left him hovering and sick in the hole. But it must have been only some animal.
He uncovered the top of the casket with hands already blistering.
Then he cursed as he realized the catches were near the bottom, making his work even harder.
He reached them at last, fumbling them open. The metal top of the casket seemed to be a dome of solid lead, and he had no room to maneuver, but it began swinging up reluctantly, until he could feel the polished wood of the coffin.
Dane reached for the lid with hands he could barely control. Fear was thick in his throat now. What could an alien do to a man who discovered it? Would it be Harding there—or some monstrous thing still changing? How long did it take a revived monster to go mad when it found no way to escape?
He gripped the shovel in one hand, working at the lid with the other. Now, abruptly, his nerves steadied, as they had done whenever he was in real battle. He swung the lid up and began groping for the camera.
His hand went into the silk-lined interior and found nothing! He was too late. Either Harding had gotten out somehow before the final ceremony or a confederate had already been here. The coffin was empty.
There were no warning sounds this time—only hands that slipped under his arms and across his mouth, lifting him easily from the grave. A match flared briefly and he was looking into the face of fuehl’s chief strong-arm man.
“Hello, Mr. Phillips. Promise to be quiet and we’ll release you. Okay?” At Dane’s sickened nod, he gestured to the others. “Let him go. And, Tom, better get that filled in. We don’t want any trouble from this.”
Surprise came from the grave a moment later. “Hey, Burke, there’s no corpse here!”
Burke’s words killed any hopes Dane had at once. “So what? Ever hear of cremation? Lots of people use a regular coffin for the ashes.”
“He wasn’t cremated,” Dane told him. “You can check up on that.” But he knew it was useless.
“Sure, Mr. Phillips. We’ll do that.” The tone was one reserved for humoring madmen. Burke turned, gesturing. “Better come along, Mr. Phillips. Your wife and Dr. Buehl are waiting at the hotel.”
The gate was open now, but there was no sign of a watchman; if one worked here, Sylvia’s money would have taken care of that, of course. Dane went along quietly, sitting in the rubble of his hopes while the big car purred through the morning and on down Lindell Boulevard toward the hotel. Once he shivered, and Burke dug out hot brandied coffee. They had thought of everything, including a coat to cover his dirt-soiled clothes as they took him up the elevator to where Buehl and Sylvia were waiting for him.
She had been crying, obviously, but there were no tears or recriminations when she came over to kiss him. Funny, she must still love him—as he’d learned to his surprise he loved her. Under different circumstances . . .
“So you found me?” he asked needlessly of Buehl. He was operating on purely automatic habits now, the reaction from the night and his failure numbing him emotionally. “Jordan got in touch with you?”
Buehl smiled back at him. “We knew where you were all along, Dane. But as long as you acted normal, we hoped it might be better than the home. Too bad we couldn’t stop you before you got all mixed up in this.”
“So I suppose I’m committed to your booby-hatch again?” Buehl nodded, refusing to resent the term. “I’m afraid so, Dane—for a while, anyhow. You’ll find your clothes in that room. Why don’t you clean up a little? Take a hot bath, maybe. You’ll feel better.”
Dane went in, surprised when no guards followed him. But they had thought of everything. What looked like a screen on the window had been recently installed and it was strong enough to prevent his escape. Blessed are the poor, for they shall be poorly guardedl
He was turning on the shower when he heard the sound of voices coming through the door. He left the water running and came back to listen. Sylvia was speaking.
“—seems so logical, so completely rational.”
“It makes him a dangerous person,” Buehl answered, and there was no false warmth in his voice now. “Sylvia, you’ve got to admit it to yourself. All the reason and analysis in the world won’t convince him he’s wrong. This time we’ll have to use shock treatment. Bum over those memories, fade them out. It’s the only possible course.”
There was a pause and then a sigh. “I suppose you’re right.”
Dane didn’t wait to hear more. He drew back, while his mind fought to accept the hideous reality. Shock treatment! The works, if what he knew of psychiatry was correct. Enough of it to erase his memories—a part of himself. It wasn’t therapy Buehl was considering; it couldn’t be.
It was the answer of an alien that had a human in its hands —one who knew too much!
He might have guessed. WThat better place for an alien than in the guise of a psychiatrist? Where else was there the chance for all the refined, modem torture needed to bum out a man’s mind? Dane had spent ten years in fear of being discovered by them—and now Buehl had him.
Sylvia? He couldn’t be sure. Probably she was human. It wouldn’t make any difference. There was nothing he could do through her. Either she was part of the game or she really thought him mad.
Dane tried the window again, but it was hopeless. There would be no escape this time. Buehl couldn’t risk it. The shock treatment—or whatever Buehl would use under the name of shock treatment—would begin at once. It would be easy to slip, to use an overdose of something, to make sure Dane was killed. Or there were ways of making sure it didn’t matter. They could leave him alive, but take his mind away.
In alien hands, human psychiatry could do worse than all the medieval torture chambers 1
The sickness grew in his stomach as he considered the worst that could happen. Death he could accept, if he had to. He could even face the chance of torture by itself, as he had accepted the danger while trying to have his facts published. But to have his mind taken from him, a step at a time—to watch his personality, his ege, rotted away under him—and to know that he would wind up as a drooling idiot . . .
He made his decision, almost as quickly as he had come to realize what Buehl must be.
There was a razor in the medicine chest. It was a safety razor, of course, but the blade was sharp and it would be big enough. There was no time for careful planning. One of the guards might come in at any moment if they thought he was taking too long.
Some fear came back as he leaned over the wash basin, staring at his throat, fingering the suddenly murderous blade. But the pain wouldn’t last long—a lot less than there would be under shock treatment, and less pain. He’d read enough to feel sure of that.
Twice he braced himself and failed at the last second. His mind flashed out in wild schemes, fighting against what it knew had to be done.
The world still had to be warned! If he could escape, somehow ... if he could still find a way. . . . He couldn’t quit, no matter how impossible things looked.
But he knew better. There was nothing one man could do against the aliens in this world they had taken over. He’d never had a chance. Man had been chained already by carefully developed ridicule against superstition, by carefully indoctrinated gobbledegook about insanity, persecution complexes, and all the rest.
For a second, Dane even considered the possibility that he was insane. But he knew it was only a blind effort to cling to life. There had been no insanity in him when he’d groped for evidence in the coffin and found it empty!
He leaned over the wash basin, his eyes focused on his throat, and his hand came down and around, carrying the razor blade through a lethal semicircle.
Dane Phillips watched fear give place to sickness on his face as the pain lanced through him and the blood spurted.
He watched horror creep up to replace the sickness while the bleeding stopped and the gash began closing.
By the time he recognized his expression as the same one he’d seen on his father’s face at the window so long ago, the wound was completely healed.
The Haunted Corpse
BY FREDERIK POHL
With Horns invention, we had the world by the tail, by God ... or was that our own tail?
Well, we moved in pretty promptly. This Van Pelt turned up at the Pentagon on a Thursday, and by the following Monday, I had a task force of a hundred and thirty-five men with full supply bivouacked around the old man’s establishment.
He didn’t like it. I rather expected he wouldn’t. He came storming out of the big house as the trucks came in. “Get out of here! Go on, get out! This is private property and you’re trespassing. I won’t have it, do you hear me? Get out!”
I stepped out of the jeep and gave him a soft salute. “Colonel Windermere, sir. My orders are to establish a security cordon around your laboratories. Here you are, sir—your copy of the orders.”
He scowled and fussed and finally snatched the orders out of my hand. Well, they were signed by General Follansbee himself, so there wasn’t much argument. I stood by politely, prepared to make matters as painless for him as I could. I don’t hold with antagonizing civilians unnecessarily. But he evidently didn’t want it to be painless.
“Van Pelt!” he bellowed. “Why, that rotten, decrepit, backstabbing monster of a—”
I listened attentively. He was very good. What he was saying in essence was that he felt his former associate, Van Pelt, had had no right to report to the Pentagon that there was potential military applicability in the Horn Effect. Of course,
it was the trimmings with which he stated his complaint that made it so effective.
I finally had to interrupt him. “Dr. Horn, the general asked me to give you his personal assurance that we will not in any way interfere with your work here. It is only a matter of security. I’m sure you understand the importance of security, sir.”
“Security 1 Now listen here, Lieutenant, I won’t tolerate—” “Colonel, sir. Lieutenant Colonel Windermere.”
“Colonel, general, lieutenant, what the hell do I care? Listen to me! The Horn Effect is my personal property, not yours, not Van Pelt’s, not the government’s, not anybody’s but mine! I was working in personality dissociation before you were born and—”
“Security, sir!" I made it crackle.
He looked at me pop-eyed and I nodded toward my driver. “He isn’t cleared, Dr. Horn,” I explained. “All right, O’Hare. You’re dismissed.”
Sergeant O’Hare saluted from behind the wheel and took off.
I said soothingly: “Now, Dr. Horn, I want you to know that I’m here to help you. If there’s anything you want, just ask; I’ll get it. Even if you want to go into town, that can be arranged. Of course, you’d better give us twenty-four-hours’ notice so we can arrange a route and—”
He said briefly: “Young man, go to the devil.” And he turned and stalked into the big house. I watched him and I remember thinking that, for a lean old goat of eighty or eighty-five, he had a lot of spirit.
I went about my business and Dr. Horn picked up the phone in his house and demanded the Pentagon to protest our being here. When he finally realized he was talking to our intercept monitor, and that no calls would go out on his line without authorization from me, he yelled up another storm.
But naturally that wasn’t going to get him anywhere. Not
when General Follansbee himself had signed the orders.
About oh-eight-hundred the next morning, I ran a surprise full-scale inspection and simulated infiltration to keep the detachment on its toes. It all checked out perfectly. I had detailed Sergeant O’Hare to try to sneak in from the marshland south of the old man’s place, and he was spotted fifty yards from the perimeter. When he reported to me, he was covered with mud and shaking.
“Those trigger-happy ba—those guards, sir, nearly blew my head off. If the officer of the day hadn’t happened by, I think they would of done it, only he recognized me.”
“All right, Sergeant.” I dismissed him and went in to breakfast. The wire-stringing detail hadi worked all night and we were now surrounded with triple-strand electrified barbwire, with an outer line of barbwire chevaux-de-frise. There were guard towers every fifty yards and at the corners, and a construction detail was clearing the brush for an additional twenty yards outside the wire. I thought briefly of bulldozing a jeep-path in the cleared area for permanent rotating patrols, but it didn’t really seem necessary.
I was rather hungry and a little sleepy—that wire-stringing detail had made quite a lot of noise. But on the whole, I was pleased, if a little irritable.
The O.D. phoned in for instructions while I was breakfasting; Van Pelt had arrived from town and the O.D. wouldn’t let him in without my approval. I authorized it, and in a moment Van Pelt turned up in my private mess, looking simultaneously worried and jubilant.
“How’d he take it, Colonel?” he asked. “Is he—I mean is he sore?”
“Very.”
"Oh.” Van Pelt quivered slightly, then shrugged. “Well, you’re here, so I guess he won’t try anything.” He looked hungrily at my buckwheat cakes and sausages. “I, uh, didn’t get a chance to have breakfast on the way down—”
“Be my guest, Dr. Van Pelt.” I ordered another place set and extra portions of everything. He ate it all—God knows how. Looking at him, you’d think he could march two hundred miles on the stored fat he already had. He wasn’t much over five-six, perhaps five-seven, and I’d guess two hundred and eighty pounds bone-dry. He was about as unlike Dr. Horn as you could imagine.
I wondered how they had got along, working together—but I already knew the answer. They got along badly, else Van Pelt never would have gone running to the Pentagon. I tried to keep an open mind about that, of course. I mean General Follansbee thought it was important to national defense, and so on—
But I couldn’t help thinking how I would feel if some junior went over my head in that way. Military discipline is one thing, and civilian affairs, as I understand it, are something else, but all the same—
Anyway, he had done it and here we were. Not much like a fighting command for me, but orders are orders.
At fourteen hundred, I paid a call on Dr. Horn.
He looked up as the clerk-typist corporal and I came in. He didn’t say anything, just stood up and pointed to the door.
I said: “Good afternoon, Dr. Horn. If this is an inconvenient time for you to make your daily progress report, just say the word. I’m here to help you, you know. Would from twelve to thirteen hundred every day be more satisfactory? Or in the morning?”
“Every day?”
