The Best of L Sprague De Camp Part 3

"Okay, Honoria, you help us carry some of dis food out to the truck, see? Cheez, Smoke, lookit de mess. Dat beh's been around here. If you see him, plug him. Beh steaks is good eating, I hoid."

The other man mumbled something and Johnny could hear the slapping of Honoria's slippers as she moved about and presently the opening of the outside kitchen door. Still shuddering at the idea of becoming a steak, he pushed his door open a crack. Through the screen of the outside door he could see Honoria, arms full of provisions, docilely obeying commands and piling the cans and bags in the truck. The men sat on their running board and smoked while Honoria, like one hypnotized, made several trips back to the kitchen. When they said "Dat's all," she sat down on the kitchen steps and relapsed into her former state. The truck drove off.

Johnny hurried out and made for the clump of frees on the end of the Station's property opposite Bemis' house. The clump crowned a little hill, making it both a good hiding place and a vantage point. He thought, evidently the Station wasn't big enough for him and the strange men both, if they were going to corner the food supply and kill him on sight. Then he considered Honoria's actions. The negress, normally a strong-minded person of granite stubbornness, had carried out every order without a peep. Evidently the disease or whatever it was didn't affect a person mentally or physically, except that it deprived the victim of all initiative and will power. Honoria had remembered her own name and understood orders well enough. Johnny wondered why he hadn't been affected also; then, remembering the chimpanzee, concluded that it was probably specific to the higher anthropoids.

He watched more balloons rise and saw two men come out of the bungalow and talk to the inflators. One stocky figure Johnny was sure was Bemis. If that was so, the botanist must be the mastermind of the gang, and Johnny had at least four enemies to deal with. How? He didn't know. Well, he could at least dispose of the remaining food in the Station kitchen before the plug-uglies got it.

He went down and made a quart of coffee, which he could do easily enough because the pilot light of the gas stove had been left on. He poured it into a frying pan to cool, and lapped it up, simultaneously polishing off a whole loaf of bread.

Back in his hideaway he had difficulty sleeping; the coffee stimulated his mind, and plans for attacking the bungalow swarmed into it in clouds, until he almost felt like raiding it right then. But he didn't, knowing that his eyesight was especially poor at night, and suspecting that all four of the enemy would be in.

He awoke at sunrise and watched the house until he saw the two tough ones come out and go to work on the balloons, and heard the little engine start its put-put-put. Making a long detour, he sneaked up from the opposite side and crawled under the house, which, like most Virgin Island bungalows, had no cellar. He crept around until the sc.r.a.pe of feet on the thin floor overhead told him he was under the men within. He heard Bemis' voice: ". . . Al and Shorty, and now those fools are caught in Havana with no way of getting down here, because transportation will be tied up all over the Caribbean by now."

Another voice, British, answered: "I suppose that in time it'll occur to them to go up to the owner of a boat or plane, and simply tell the chap to bring them here. That's the only thing for them to do, with everybody in Cuba under the influence of the molds by now, what? How many more balloons should we send up?"

"All we have," replied Bemis.

"But I say, don't you think we ought to keep some in reserve? It wouldn't do to have to spend the rest of our lives sending spores up into the stratosphere, in the hope that the cosmics will give us another mutation like this one-"

"I said all the balloons, not all the spores, Forney. I have plenty of those in reserve, and I'm growing more from my molds all the time. Anyway, suppose we did run out before the whole world was affected -which it will be in a few weeks? There wasn't a chance in a million of that first mutation-yet it happened. That's how I know it was a sign from above, that I was chosen to lead the world out of its errors and confusions, which I shall do! G.o.d gave me this power over the world, and He will not fail me!"

So, thought Johnny, his mind working furiously, that was it! He knew that Bemis was an expert on molds. The botanist must have sent a load up into the stratosphere where the cosmic rays could work on them, and one of the mutations thereby produced had the property of attacking the human brain, when the spores were inhaled and got at the olfactory nerve endings, in such a w~y as to destroy all will power. And now Bemis was broadcasting these spores all over the world, after which he would take charge of the Earth, ordering the inhabitants thereof to do whatever he wished. Since he and his a.s.sistants had not been affected, there must be an antidote or preventative of some sort. Probably Bemis kept a supply handy. If there were some way of forcing Bemis to tell where it was-if, for instance, he could tie him up and write out a message demanding the information. . . - But that wouldn't be practical. He'd have to settle with the gang first, and trust to luck to find the antidote.

One of the men working on the balloons spoke: "Ten o'clock, Bert. Time to go for the mail."

"Won't be no mail, you dope. Everybody in Frederiksted's sitting around like he was hopped."

"Yeah, that's so. But we ought to start organizing 'em, before they all croak of starvation. We gotta have somebody to work for us."

"All right, smart guy, you go ahead and arganize; I'll take a minute off for a smoke. S'pose you try to get the phone soivice woiking again."

Johnny watched one pair of booted legs disappear into the truck, which presently rolled out of the driveway. The other pair of legs came over to the front steps and sat down. Johnny remembered a tree on the other side of the house, whose trunk pa.s.sed dose to the eaves.

Four minutes later he paddled silently across the roof and looked down on the smoker. Bert threw away his cigarette b.u.t.t and stood up. Instantly Johnny's ~oo steel-muscled pounds landed on his back and flung him p.r.o.ne. Before he could fill his lungs to shout, the bear's paw landed with a pop on the side of his head. Bert quivered and subsided, his skull having acquired a peculiarly lopsided appearance.

Johnny listened. The house was quiet. But the man called Smoke would be coming back in the truck. . . . Johnny quickly dragged the corpse under the house. Then he cautiously opened the front screen door with his paws and stole in, holding his claws up so they wouldn't click against the floor. He located the room from which Bemis' voice had come. He could hear that voice, with its exaggerated oratorical resonance, wafting through the door now.

He pushed the door open slowly. The room was the botanist's laboratory and was full of flowerpots, gla.s.s cases of plants, and chemical apparatus. Bemis and a young man, evidently the Englishman, were sitting at the far end talking animatedly.

Johnny was halfway across the room before they saw him. They jumped up; Forney cried, "Good Gad!" Bemis gave one awful shriek as Johnny's right paw, with a swift scooping motion, operated on his abdomen in much the way that a patent ice-cream scoop works in its normal medium. Bemis, now quite a horrible sight, tried to walk, then to crawl, then slowly sank into a pooi of his own blood.

Forney, staring at Bemis' trailing guts, s.n.a.t.c.hed up a chair to fend off Johnny, as he had seen circus chappies do with lions. Johnny, however, was not a lion. Johnny rose on his hind legs and batted the chair across the room, where it came to rest with a crash of gla.s.s. Forney broke for the door, but Johnny was on his back before he had gone three steps. - Johnny wondered how to dispose of Smoke when he returned. Perhaps if he hid behind the door and pounced on him as he came in, he could finish him before the man could get his gun out. Johnny had a healthy dread of stopping another bullet. Then he noticed four automatic rifles in the umbrella stand in the hall. Johnny was a good shot with a rifle-or at least as good as his eyesight permitted. He partly opened the breech of one gun to a.s.sure himself that it was loaded, and found a window that commanded the driveway. When Smoke returned and got out of the truck, he never knew what hit him.

Johnny set out to find the antidote. Bemis should have kept some around, perhaps in his desk. The desk was locked, but, although made of sheet steel, it wasn't designed to keep out a determined and resourceful bear. Johnny hooked his claws under the lowest drawer, braced himself and heaved. The steel bent, and the drawer came out with a rending sound. The others responded in turn. In the last one he found a biggish squat bottle whose label he made out, with his spectacles, to read "Pota.s.sium iodide." There were also two hypodermic syringes.

Probably this was the antidote, and worked by injection. But how was he to work it? He carefully extracted the bottle-cork with his teeth, and tried to fill one of the hypodermics. By holding the barrel of the device between his paws and working the plunger with his mouth, he at last succeeded.

Taking the syringe in his mouth, he trotted back to the Station. He found the underwear-clad Methuen in the kitchen, dreamily eating such sc.r.a.ps as had been left by his and the plug-uglies' raids. Breuker, the psychologist, and Dr. Bouvet, the Haitian negro bacteri~ ologist, were engaged likewise. Evidently the pangs of hunger caused them to wander around until they found something edible, and their feeble instincts enabled them to eat it without having to be told to do so. Beyond that they were utterly helpless without orders and would sit like vegetables until they starved.

Johnny tried to inject the solution into Methuen's calf, holding the syringe crosswise in his teeth and pushing the plunger with one paw. But at the p.r.i.c.k of the needle the man instinctively jerked away. Johnny tried again and again. He finally grabbed Methuen and held him down while he applied the needle, but the man squirmed so that the syringe broke.

A discouraged black bear cleaned up the broken gla.s.s. Except possibly for the missing Al and Shorty, he would soon be the only thinking being left on Earth with any initiative at all. He fervently hoped that Al and Shorty were still in Cuba-preferably six feet underground. He didn't care so much what happened to the human race, which contained so many vicious specimens. But he did have a certain affection for his cadaverous and whimsical boss, Methuen. And, more important from his point of view, he didn't like the idea of spending the rest of his life rustling his own food like a wild bear. Such an existence would be much too stupid for a bear of his intelligence. He would, of course, have access to the Station library, but there wouldn't be anybody to explain the hard parts of chemistry and the other sciences to him when he got stuck.

He returned to Bemis' and brought back both the bottle and the remaining hypodermic, which he filled as he had the previous one. He tried inserting the needle very gently into Professor Methuen, but the biologist still jerked away. Johnny didn't dare try any rough stuff for fear of breaking his only remaining syringe. He tried the same tactics with Breuker and Bouvet, with no better results. He tried it on Honoria, dozing on the kitchen steps. But she awoke instantly and pulled away, rubbing the spot where she had been p.r.i.c.ked.

Johnny wondered what to try next. He considered knocking one of the men unconscious and injecting him; but, no, he didn't know how hard to hit to stun without killing. He knew that if he really swung on one of them he could crack his skull like an eggsh.e.l.l.

He waddled out to the garage and got a coil of rope, with which he attempted to tie up the again-sleeping Honoria. Having only paws and teeth to work with, he got himself more tangled in the rope than the cook, who awoke and rid herself of the coils without difficulty.

He sat down to think. There didn't seem to be any way that he could inject the solution. But in their present state the human beings would do anything they were told. If somebody ordered one to pick up the hypodermic and inject himself, he'd do it.

Johnny laid the syringe in front of Methuen, and tried to tell him what to do. But he couldn't talk-his attempts to say "Pick up the syringe" came out as "Fee-feek opp feef-feef." The Professor stared blankly and looked away. Sign language was no more successful.

Johnny gave up and put the bottle and syringe on a high shelf where the men couldn't get at them. He wandered around, hoping that something would give him an idea. In Ryerson's room he saw a typewriter, and thought he had it. He couldn't handle a pencil, but he could operate one of these machines after a fashion. The chair creaked alarmingly under his weight, but held together. He took a piece of typewriter paper between his lips, dangled it over the machine, and turned the platen with both paws until he caught the paper in it. The paper was in crooked, but that couldn't be helped. He'd have preferred to write in Spanish because it was easy to spell, but Spanish wasn't the native tongue of any of the men at the Station, and he didn't want to strain their faculties, so English it would have to be. Using one claw at a time, he slowly tapped out: "PICK UP SIRINGE AND INJECT SOLUTION INTO YOUR UPPER ARM." The spelling of "siringe" didn't look right, but he couldn't be bothered with that now.

Taking the paper in his mouth he shuffled back to the kitchen. This time he put the syringe in front of Methuen, squalled to attract his attention, and dangled the paper in front of his eyes. But the biologist glanced only briefly at it and looked away. Growling with vexation, Johnny pushed the syringe out of harm's way and tried to force Methuen to read. But the scientist merely squirmed in his grasp and paid no attention to the paper. The longer he was held the harder he tried to escape. When the bear released him, he walked across the room and settled into his trance again.

Giving up for the time being, Johnny put away the syringe and made himself another quart of coffee. It was weak stuff, as there wasn't much of the raw material left. But maybe it would give him an idea. Then he went out and walked around in the twilight, thinking furiously. It seemed absurd-even his little bear's sense of humor realized that-that the spell could be broken by a simple command, that he alone in the whole world knew the command, and that he had no way of giving it. He wondered what would happen if he never did find a way out. Would the whole human race simply die off, leaving him the only intelligent creature on Earth? Of course such an event would have its advantages, but he feared that it would be a dull life. He could take a boat from the harbor and head for the mainland, and then hike north to Mexico where he would find others of his species. But he wasn't sure that they'd be congenial company; they might, resenting his strangeness, even kill him. No, that idea wouldn't do, yet.

The Station's animals, unfed for two days, were noisy in their cages. Johnny slept badly and awoke well before dawn. He thought he'd had an idea, but couldn't remember. .

Wait. It had something to do with Breuker. He was a specialist on the psychology of speech, wasn't he? He did things with a portable phonograph recording apparatus; Johnny had seen him catching McGinty's yells. He went up to Breuker's room. Sure enough, there was the machine. Johnny opened it up and spent the next two hours figuring out how it worked. He could crank the motor easily enough, and with some patience learned to operate the switches. He finally adjusted the thing for recording, started the motor, and bawled ~'Wa-a-a-a-a-a-ah!" into it. He stopped the machine, threw the playback switch, set the needle in the outer groove of the aluminum disk, and started it. For a few seconds it sc.r.a.ped quietly, then yelled "Waa-a-a-a-a-ah!" at him. Johnny squealed with pleasure.

He was on the track of something, but he didn't quite know what. A phonograph record of his cry would be no more effective in commanding the men than the original of that cry. Well, Breuker must have a collection of records. After some hunting, Johnny found them in a set of cases that looked like letter files. He leafed through them and read the labels. "Bird Cries: Red-and-Green Macaw, c.o.c.katoo, Mayana." That was no help. "Infant Babble: 6-9 Months." Also out. "Lancashire Dialect." He tried this disk and listened to a monologue about a little boy who was swallowed by a lion. From his expe rience with little boys Johnny thought that a good idea, but there was nothing in the record that would be of use.

The next was labeled "American Speech Series, No. 7z-B, Lincoln County, Missouri." It started off: "Once there was a young rat who couldn't make up his mind. Whenever the other rats asked him if he'd like to come out with them, he'd answer, 'I don't know.' And when they said, 'Wouldn't you like to stop at home?' he wouldn't say yes or no either; he'd always shirk making a choice. One day his aunt said to him, 'Now look here! No one will ever care for you if you carry on like this. . .

The record ground on, but Johnny's mind was made up. If he could get it to say "Now look here!" to Methuen, his problem ought to be solved. It wouldn't do any good to play the whole record, as those three words didn't stand out from the rest of the discourse. If he could make a separate record of just those words. .

But how could he, when there was only one machine? He needed two-one to play the record and one to record the desired words. He squalled with exasperation. To be licked after he'd gotten this far! He felt like heaving the machine out the window. At least it would make a beautiful crash.

Like a flash the solution came to him. He closed the recorder and carried it down to the social room, where there was a small phonograph used by the scientists for their amus.e.m.e.nt. He put the American Speech disk on this machine, put a blank disk on the recorder, and started the phonograph, with a claw on the switch of the recorder to start it at the right instant.

Two hours and several ruined disks later, he had what he wanted. He took the recorder to the kitchen, set it up, laid the syringe in front of Methuen, and started the machine. It purred and sc.r.a.ped for ten seconds, and then said sharply, "Now look here! Now look here! Now look here!" and resumed its sc.r.a.ping. Methuen's eyes snapped back into focus and he looked intently in front of him-at the sheet of paper with a single line of typing across it that Johnny dangled before his eyes. He read the words, and without a flicker of emotion picked up the syringe and jabbed the needle into his biceps.

Johnny shut off the machine. He'd have to wait now to see whether the solution took effect. As the minutes pa.s.sed, he had an awful feeling that maybe it wasn't the antidote after all. A half-hour later, Methuen pa.s.sed a hand across his forehead. His first words were barely audible, but grew louder like a radio set warming up: "What in Heaven's name happened to us, Johnny? I remember everything that's taken place in the last three days, but during that time I didn't seem to have any desires-not enough will of my own to speak, even."

Johnny beckoned, and headed for Ryerson's room and the typewriter. Methuen, who knew his Johnny, inserted a sheet of paper for him. Time pa.s.sed, and Methuen said, "I see now. What a sweet setup for a would-be dictator! The whole world obeys his orders implicitly; all he has to do is select subordinates and tell them what to order the others to do. Of course the antidote was pota.s.sium iodide; that's the standard fungicide, and it cleared the mold out of my head in a hurry. Come on, old-timer, we've got work to do. The first thing is to get the other men around here to inject themselves. Think of it, Johnny, a bear saving the world! After this you can chew all the tobacco you want. I'll even try to get a female bear for you and infect her brain the way I did yours, so that you can have some company worthy of you."

A week later everyone on St. Croix had been treated, and men had been sent off to the mainland and the other Caribbean islands to carry on the work.

Johnny Black, finding little to arouse his curiosity around the nearly deserted Biological Station, shuffled into the library. He took Volume ~ of the Britannica, opened it to "Chemistry," and set to work again. He hoped that Methuen would get back in a month or so and would find time to explain the hard parts to him, but meanwhile he'd have to wade through it as best he could.

THE MERMAN.

A JovE NODS occasionally, so Vernon Brock forgot to wind his alarm clock, and as a result arrived at his office with the slightly giddy feeling that comes of having had no breakfast but a hasty cup of coffee.

He glanced at the apparatus that filled half the scant s.p.a.ce in the room, thought, you'll be famous yet if this works, my lad, and sat down at his desk. He thought, being an a.s.sistant aquarist isn't such a bad job. Of course there's never enough money or enough room or enough time, but that's probably the case in most lines of work. And the office was really quiet. The chatter and shuffle of the visitors to the New York City Aquarium never penetrated; the only sounds were those of running water, the hum of the pump motors, and the faint ticking of typewriters. And he did love the work. The only thing that he possibly loved better than his fish was Miss Engholm, and for strategic reasons he wasn't telling anybody-least of all the lady-yet.

Then, nothing could have been sweeter than his interview with the boss yesterday. Clyde Sugden had said he was going to retire soon and that he was using his influence to have Brock advanced to his place. Brock had protested without much conviction that, after all, Hempl had been there longer than he, and so ought to have the job.

"No," the head aquarist had said. "The feeling does you credit, Vernon, but Hempl wouldn't do. He's a good subordinate, but has no more initiative than a lamellibranch. And he'd never sit up all night nursing a sick octopus the way you would." And so forth. Well, Brock hoped he really was that good, and that he wouldn't get a swelled head. But, knowing the rarity of direct praise from superiors, he was determined to enjoy that experience to the utmost He glanced at his calendar pad. "Labeling": that meant that the labels on the tanks were out of date again. With the constant death of specimens and acquisition of new ones that characterizes aquaria, this condition was chronic. He'd do some label-shifting this evening. "Alligator": a man had phoned and said that he was coming in to present one to the inst.i.tution. Brock knew what that meant. Some fatheaded tourist had bought a baby 'gator in Florida without the faintest notion of how to keep it properly, and now he would be dumping the skinny little wretch on the Aquarium before it died of starvation and the effects of well-meant ignorance. It happened all the time. "Legislature": what the Devil? Oh, yes, he was going to write to the Florida state legislature in support of a bill to prohibit the export of live alligators by more fatheaded tourists, while there were still some of the unfortunate reptiles left alive in the state.

Then the mail. Somebody wanted to know why her guppies developed white spots and died. Somebody wanted to know what kind of water plants to keep in a home aquarium, and the name of a reliable seller of such plants in Pocatello, Idaho. Somebody wanted to know how to tell a male from a female lobster. Somebody-this was in nearly illegible longhand, at which Brock cursed with mild irritation -"Dear Mr. Brock: I heard your lecture last June i8th inst., on how we are dissended from fish. Now you made a pretty good speech but I think if you will excuse my frankness that you are all wrong. I got a theory that the fish is really dissended from us. - ."

He picked up the telephone and said, "Please send in Miss Engholm." She came in; they said "Good morning" formally, and he dictated letters for an hour. Then he said without changing his tone, "How about dinner tonight?" (Somebody might come in, and he had a mild phobia about letting the office force in on his private affairs.) "Fine," said the girl. "The usual place?"

"Okay. Only I'll be late; labeling, you know . . ." He thought, foolish man, how surprised she'd be when he asked her to marry him. That would be after his promotion.

He decided to put in a couple of hours on his research before lunch. He tied on his old rubber ap.r.o.n and soon had the bunsen burners going merrily. Motions were perforce acrobatic in the confined s.p.a.ce. But he had to put up with that until the famous extension was finished. Then in a couple of years they'd be as cramped as ever again.

Sugden stuck his white thatch in the door. "May we come in?" He introduced a man as Dr. Dumville of the Cornell Medical Center. Brock knew the physiologist by reputation and was only too glad to explain his work.

"You're of course familiar, Doctor," he said, "with the difference between lung tissue and gill tissue. For one thing, gill tissue has no mucus-secreting cells to keep the surfaces moist out of water. Hence the gills dry and harden, and no longer pa.s.s oxygen one way and carbon dioxide the other as they should. But the gills of many aquatic organisms can be made to function out of water by keeping them moist artificially. Some of these forms regularly come out of water for considerable periods, like the fiddler crab and the mud skipper, for instance. They're all right as long as they can go back and moisten their gills occasionally.

"But in no case can a lung be used as a gill, to extract oxygen dissolved in water, instead of absorbing it from the air. I've been studying the reasons for this for some years; they're partly mechanical- the difficulty of getting anything as dense as water in and out of the spongy lung structure fast enough-and partly a matter of the different osmotic properties of the breather cells which are each adapted to operate on oxygen of a given concentration dispersed in a medium of given density.

"I've found, however, that the breather cells of lung tissue can be made to react to certain stimuli so as to a.s.sume the osmotic properties of gill tissue. It consists mainly of a mixture of halogen-bearing organic compounds. A good dose of the vapor of that stuff in the lungs of one of the young alligators in this tank should enable him to breathe under water, if my theory is correct."

"I'd suggest one thing," said Dumville, who had been giving polite but interested "uh-huh's," "which is that when you hold your alligator under water, his glottal muscles will automatically contract, sealing off his lungs to keep out the water, and he'll suffocate."

"I've thought of that, and I'll paralyze the nerves controlling those muscles first, so he'll have to breathe water whether he wants to or not."

"That's the idea. Say, I want to be in on this. When are you going to try out your first alligator?"

They talked until Sugden began clearing his throat meaningfully. He said, "There's a lot more to see, Dr. Dumville. You've got to take a look at our new extension. We certainly sweat blood getting the city to put up the money for it." He got Dumville out, and Brock could hear his voice dying away: ". . . it'll be mostly for new pumping and filtering machinery; we haven't half the sj~ace we need now. There'll be two tanks big enough for the smaller cetaeca, and we'll finally have some direct sunlight. You can't keep most of the amphibia without it. We had to take half the d.a.m.ned old building apart to do it. . ." Brock smiled. The extension was Sugden's monument, and the old boy would never retire until it was officially opened.

Brock turned back to his apparatus. He had just begun to concentrate on it when Sam Baritz stuck his gargoyle's face in. "Say, Vuinon, where ya gonna put the bichir? It gets in tomorrow."

"Mmm-clear the filefish out of 43, and we'll make up a batch of Nile water this afternoon for it. It's too valuable to risk with other species until we know more about it. And-oh, h.e.l.l, put the filefish in a reserve tank for the present."

That means another new label, he thought as he turned back to his chemicals. What would be a good wording? "Esteemed as food . . ." Yes. "Closely related to fossil forms"? Too indefinite. "Related to fossil forms from which most modern fish and all the higher vertebrates are descended." More like it. Maybe he could work in the words "living fossil" somehow. . .

In his abstraction he hadn't noticed that the flask into which the oily liquid was dripping had been nudged too dose to the edge of the table. The slam of a dropped plank from the extension where construction was still going on made him start nervously, and the flask came loose and smashed on the floor. Brock yelped with dismay and anger. Three weeks' work was spread over the floor. He took his morning paper apart and swept up gla.s.s and solution. As he knelt over the wreckage, the fumes made his eyes water. In his annoyance it never occurred to him that a man's lungs aren't so different from an alligator's.

He answered the telephone. It was Halperin, the goldfish man. "I'm making a little trip down south; do you guys want me to pick up some bowfin or gar?" Brock said he'd have to ask Sugden and would call back. "Well, don't take too long, Vuinon, I'm leaving this afternoon. Be seem' ya."

Brock set out on the long semicircular catwalk over the groundfloor tanks that led around to the rear of the building and the entrance to the extension. As an old aquarium man he walked without faltering; he could imagine Dumville's cautious progress, clutching pipes and the edges of reserve tanks while glancing fearfully into the waters below.

Brock's lungs ached queerly. Must have gotten a whiff of that gunk of mine, he thought; that was a fool thing to do. But there couldn't have been enough to do any real harm. He kept on. The ache got worse; there was a strange suffocating sensation. This is serious, he thought. I'd better see a doctor after I deliver Halperin's message to Sugden. He kept on.

His lungs seemed to be on fire. Hurry-hurry-Dumville's an M.D.; maybe he could fix me up. Brock couldn't breathe. He wanted water-not, oddly, in his throat, but in his lungs. The cool depths of the big tank and the end of the semicircle were below him. This tank held the sharks; the other big tank, for groupers and other giants of the ba.s.s tribe, was across from it.

His lungs burned agonizingly. He tried to call out, but only made afaint croaking noise. The tangle of pipes seemed to whirl around him. The sound of running water became a roar. He swayed, missed as.n.a.t.c.h at the nearest reserve tank, and pitched into the shark tank. There was water in his eyes, in his ears, everywhere. The burning in his lungs was lessening, and in place of it came a cold feeling throughout his chest. The bottom came up and b.u.mped him softly. He righted himself. That was wrong; he should have floated. Then the reason came to him; his lungs were full of water, so that his specific gravity was one point something. He wondered for a confused minute if he was already drowned. He didn't feel drowned, only very wet and very cold inside. In any event he'd better get out of here quickly. He kicked himself to the surface, reached up and grabbed the catwalk, and tried to blow the water out of his lungs. It came, slowly, squirting out of his mouth and nostrils. He tried inhaling some air. He thought he was getting somewhere when the burning sensation returned. In spite of himself he ducked and inhaled water. Then he felt all right.

Everything seemed topsy-turvy. Then he remembered the liquid he'd prepared for the alligator; it must have worked on him! His lungs were functioning as gills. He couldn't quite believe it yet. Experimenting on an alligator is one thing; turning yourself into a fish is another-comic-section stuff. But there it was. If he'd been going to drown he'd have done so by now. He tried a few experimental breaths under water. It was amazingly hard work. You put on the pressure, and your lungs slowly contracted, like a pneumatic tire with a leak. In half a minute or so you were ready to inhale again. The reason was the density of water compared with that of air, of course. But it seemed to work. He released the catwalk and sank to the bottom again. He looked around him. The tank seemed smaller than it should be; that was the effect of the index of refraction of water, no doubt. He walked toward one side, which seemed to recede as he approached it. A fat nurse shark lying on the bottom waved its tail and slid forward out of his way.

The other two nurse sharks were lying indifferently on the bottom across the tank. These brutes were sluggish and utterly harmless. The two sand sharks, the four-footer and the five-footer, had ceased their interminable cruising and had backed into far corners. Their mouths opened and closed slowly, showing their formidable teeth. Their little yellow eyes seemed to say to Brock, "Don't start anything you can't finish, buddy." Brock had no intention of starting anything. He'd had a healthy respect for the species since one of them had bitten him in the gluteus maximus while he was hauling it into a boat.

He looked up. It was like looking up at a wrinkled mirror, with a large circular hole in it directly over his head. Through the hole he could see the reserve tanks, the pipes-everything that he could have seen by sticking his head out of water. But the view was distorted and compressed around the edges, like a photograph taken with a wide-angle lens. One of the aquarium's cats peered down inscrutably at him from the catwalk. Beyond the circle on all sides the water surface was a mirror that rippled and shivered. Over the two sand sharks were their reflections upside down.

He turned his attention to the gla.s.s front of the tank. That reflected things too, as the lamps suspended over the water made the inside brighter than the outside. By putting his head close to the gla.s.s he could see the Aquarium's interior concourse. Only he couldn't see much of it for the crowd in front of the tank. They were staring at him; in the dim light they seemed all eyeb.a.l.l.s. Now and then their heads moved and their mouths moved, but Brock got only a faint buzz.

This was all very interesting, Brock thought, but what was he to do? He couldn't stay in the tank indefinitely. For one thing, the coldness in his chest was uncomfortable. And G.o.d only knew what terrible physiological effect the gas might have had on him. And this breathing water was hard work, complicated by the fact that unless watched carefully his glottis would snap shut, stopping his breath al together. It was like learning to keep your eyes open under water. He was fortunate in having fallen into a tank of salt water; fresh water is definitely injurious to lung tissue, and so it might have been even to the modified tissue in his lungs.

He sat down crosslegged on the bottom. Behind him the larger sand shark had resumed its shuttling, keeping well away from him and halting suspiciously every time he moved. Two remoras, attached to the shark by the sucking disks on top of their heads, trailed limply from it. There were six of these original hitchhikers in the tank. He peered at the gla.s.s front. He took off his gla.s.ses experimentally and found that he could see better without them-a consequence of the different optical properties of water and air. Most of the Aquarium's visitors were now crowded in front of that tank, to watch a youngish man in a black rubber ap.r.o.n, a striped shirt, and the pants of a gray flannel suit sit on the bottom of a tank full of sharks and wonder how in h.e.l.l he was going to get out of this predicament.

Overhead, there was no sign of anybody. Evidently n.o.body had heard him fall in. But soon one of the small staff would notice the crowd in front of the tank and investigate. Meanwhile he'd better see just what he could do in this bizarre environment. He tried to speak. But his vocal cords, tuned to operate in a negligibly dense medium, refused to flutter fast enough to emit an audible sound. Well, maybe he could come to the surface long enough to speak and duck under again. He rose to the top and tried it. But he had trouble getting his water-soaked breathing and speaking apparatus dry enough to use for this purpose. All he produced were gurgling noises. And while the air no longer burned his lungs on immediate contact, keeping his head out soon gave him a dizzy, suffocating feeling. He finally gave up and sank to the bottom again.

He shivered with the cold, although the water was at 65 Fahrenheit. He'd better move around to warm up. The ap.r.o.n hampered him, and he tried to untie the knot in back. But the water had swollen the cords so that the knot wouldn't budge. He finally wriggled out of it, rolled it up, stuck his arm out of water, and tossed the ap.r.o.n onto the catwalk. He thought of removing his shoes too, but remembered the sand shark's teeth.

Then he did a bit of leisurely swimming, round and round like the sand sharks. They also went round and round, trying to keep the width of the tank between him and them. The motion warmed him, but he tired surprisingly soon. Evidently the rapid metabolism of a mammal took about all the oxygen that his improvised gills could supply, and they wouldn't carry much overload. He reduced his swimming to an imitation of a seal's, legs trailing and hands flapping at his sides. The crowd, as he pa.s.sed the front of the tank, was thicker than ever. A little man with a nose that swerved to starboard watched him with peculiar intentness.

A jarring sound came through the water, and presently figures, grotesquely shortened, appeared at the edge of the circle of transparency overhead. They grew rapidly taller, and he recognized Sugden, Dumville, Sam Baritz, and a couple of other members of the staff. They cl.u.s.tered on the catwalk, and their excited voices came to him m.u.f.fled but intelligible. They knew what had happened to him, all right. He tried by sign language to explain his predicament. They evidently thought he was in a convulsion, for Sugden barked, "Get him out!" Baritz's thick forearm shot down into the water to seize his wrist. But he wrenched loose before they had him clear of the surface, and dove for the bottom.

"Acts like he don't wannm come out," said Baritz, rubbing a kicked shin.

Sugden leaned over. "Can you hear me?" he shouted. Brock nodded vigorously.

"Can you speak to us?" Brock shook his head.

"Did you do this to yourself on purpose?" A violent shake.

"Accident?"

Brock nodded.

"Do you want to get out?"

Brock nodded and shook his head alternately.

Sugden frowned in perplexity. Then he said, "Do you mean you'd like to but can't because of your condition?"

Brock nodded.

Sugden continued his questions. Brock, growing impatient at this feeble method of communication, made writing motions. Sugden handed down a pencil and a pocket notebook. But the water immediately softened the paper so that the pencil, instead of making marks, tore holes in it. Brock handed them back.

Sugden said: "What he needs is a wax tablet and stylus. Could you get us one, Sam?"

Baritz looked uncomfortable. "Cheez, boss, what place in N'yawk sells those things?"

"That's right, I suppose we'll have to make it ourselves. If we could melt a candle onto a piece of plywood-"