The Great Gray Plague Part 10

They used Sam's panel truck, which had a four-wheel drive and mud tires.

Nothing else could possibly get through. Fenwick left his own car at Ellerbee's.

It was still raining lightly as the truck sloshed and slewed through the muck that was hardly recognizable now as a road. For an hour Sam fought the wheel to hold the car approximately in the middle of the brownish ooze that led them through the night. The three men sat in the cab.

Behind them, a litter and first-aid equipment had been rigged for Baker.

Sam told them nothing would be needed except soap and water, but Fenwick and Ellerbee felt it impossible to go off without some other emergency equipment.

After an hour, Sam said, "He's close. Just around the next bend. That's where his car went off."

Baker loomed suddenly in the lights of the car. He was standing at the edge of the road. He waved an arm wearily.

Fenwick would not have recognized him. And for some seconds after the car had come to a halt, and Baker stood weaving uncertainly in the beam of the lights, Fenwick was not sure it was Baker at all.

He looked like something out of an old Frankenstein movie. His clothes were ripped almost completely away. Those remaining were stained with blood and red clay, and soaked with rain. Baker's face was laced with a network of scars as if he had been slashed with a shower of gla.s.s not too long ago and the wounds were freshly healed. Blood was caked and cracked on his face and was matted in his hair.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

He smiled grotesquely as he staggered toward the car door. "About time you got here," he said. "A man could catch his death of cold standing out here in this weather."

Dr. William Baker was quite sure he had no need of hospitalization, but he let them settle him in a hospital bed anyway. He had some thinking to do, and he didn't know of a better place to get it done.

There was a good deal of medical speculation about the vast network of very fresh scars on his body, the bones which X rays showed to have been only very recently knit, and the violent internal injuries which gave some evidence of their recent healing. Baker allowed the speculation to go on without offering explanations. He let them tap and measure and apply electrical gadgets to their heart's content. It didn't bother the thinking he had to get done.

Fenwick and Ellerbee came back the next day to see him. The two approached the bed so warily that Baker burst out laughing. "Pull up chairs!" he exclaimed. "Just because you saw me looking a shade less than dead doesn't mean I'm a ghost now. Sit down. And where's Sam? Not that I don't appreciate seeing your ugly faces, but Sam and I have got some things to talk about."

Ellerbee and Fenwick looked at each other as if each expected the other to speak.

"Well, what's the matter?" demanded Baker. "Nothing's happened to Sam, I hope!"

Fenwick spoke finally. "We don't know where Sam is. We don't think we'll be seeing him again."

"Why not?" Baker demanded. But in the back of his mind was the growing suspicion that he knew.

"After your--accident," said Fenwick, "I went back to the farm with Ellerbee and Sam because I'd left my car there. I went back to bed to try to get some more shut-eye, but the storm had started up again and kept me awake. Just before dawn a terrific bolt of lightning seemed to strike Sam's silo. Later, Jim went out to check on his cows and help his man finish up the milking.

"By mid-morning we hadn't heard anything from Sam and decided to go over and talk to him about what we'd seen him do for you. I guess it was eleven by the time we got there."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ... _Lightning doesn't strike up from inside a silo!

That's something else_ ...]

Jim Ellerbee nodded agreement.

"When we got there," Fenwick went on, "we saw that the front door of the house was open as if the storm had blown it in. We called Sam, but he didn't answer, so we went on in. Things were a mess. We thought it was because of the storm, but then we saw that drawers and shelves seemed to have been opened hastily and cleaned out. Some things had been dropped on the floor, but most of the stuff was just gone.

"It was that way all through the house. Sam's bed hadn't been disturbed.

He had either not slept in it, or had gone to the trouble of making it up even though he left the rest of the house in a mess."

"Sounds like the place might have been broken into," said Baker. "Didn't you notify the sheriff?"

"Not after we'd seen what was outside, in back."

"What was that?"

"We wanted to see the silo after the lightning had struck it. Jim said he'd always been curious about that silo. It was one of the best in the county, but Sam never used it. He used a pit.

"When we went out, all the cows were bellowing. They hadn't been milked.

Sam did all his own work. Jim called his own man to come and take care of Sam's cows. Then we had a close look at the silo. It had split like a banana peel opening up. It hardly seemed as if a bolt of lightning could have caused it. We climbed over the broken pieces to look inside. It was still warm in there. At least six hours after lightning--or whatever had struck it, the concrete was still warm. The bottom and several feet of the sides of the silo were covered with a gla.s.sy glaze."

"No lightning bolt did that."

"We know that now," said Fenwick. "But I had seen the flash of it myself. Then I remembered that in my groggy condition that morning something had seemed wrong about that flash of lightning. Instead of a jagged tree of lightning that formed instantly, it had seemed like a thin thread of light striking _upward_. I thought I must be getting bleary-eyed and tried to forget it. In the silo, I remembered. I told Jim.

"We went back through the house once more. In Sam's bedroom, as if accidently dropped and kicked partway under the bed, I found this. Take a look!"

Fenwick held out a small book. It had covers and pages as did any ordinary book. But when Baker's fingers touched the book, something chilled his backbone.

The material had the feel and appearance of white leather--yet Baker had the insane impression that the cells of that leather still formed a living substance. He opened the pages. Their substance was as foreign as that of the cover. The message--printing, or whatever it might be called--consisted of patterned rows of dots, pin-head size, in color. It reminded him of computer tape cut to some character code. He had the impression that an eye might scan those pages and react as swiftly as a tape-fed computer.

Baker closed the book. "Nothing more?" he asked Fenwick.

"Nothing. We thought maybe you had found out something else when he worked to save your life."

Baker kept his eyes on the ceiling. "I found out a few things," he said.

"I could scarcely believe they were true. I have to believe after hearing your story."

"What did you find?"

"Sam Atkins came from--somewhere else. He went back in the ship he had hidden in the silo."

"Where did he come from? What was he doing here?"

"I don't know the name of the world he was from or where it is located.

Somewhere in this galaxy, is about all I can deduce from my impressions.

He was here on a scientific mission, a sociological study. He was responsible for the crystals. I suppose you know that by now?" Baker glanced at Ellerbee.

Jim Ellerbee nodded. "I suspected for a long time that I was being led, but I couldn't understand it. I thought I was doing the research that produced the crystals, but Sam would drop a hint or a suggestion every once in a while, that would lead off on the right track and produce something fantastic. He knew where we were going, ahead of time. He led me to believe that we were exploring together. Do you know why he did this?"

"Yes," said Baker. "It was part of his project. The project consisted of a study of human reaction to scientific processes which our scientific culture considered impossible. He was interested in measuring our flexibility and reaction to such introductions."

Baker smiled grimly. "We sure gave him his money's worth, didn't we! We really reacted when he brought out his little cubes. I'd like to read the report he writes up!"

"Why did he leave so suddenly?" asked Fenwick. "Was he through?"