Henry Kuttner

“ Convulsively it unwound itself from that shadowed cavern and burst into the open in an agonized series of spasms that made the lake boil around it.
The men around me broke into a hoarse, triumphant shouting. If I could have done it I would have killed them all. But it was hopeless now. I had no longer even the will to revenge. When a man’s basic instinct dies within him he ceases intrinsically to be a man at all. ”

“ Fitzgerald’s copter was waiting. I could see his lead-suited figure, tiny and far below, pacing up and down impatiently as I dropped toward him. My copter settled lightly earthward. And for a moment another thought crossed my mind.
Williams! A man murdered, a man I knew and had worked with. A man I liked. That should have affected me much more deeply than it did. I knew why it hadn’t. Williams’ death was unimportant—completely trivial in the face of the—the other peril that loomed namelessly, in all its invisible menace, like a shrouded ghost rising from the lake beyond us. ”

“ I watched impersonally as it bubbled from his lips and he collapsed forward into the scarlet puddle forming so fast on the desk top. I saw how the blotter took it up at first but the fountain ran too fast and finally a trickle began to spill over the desk edge and patter on the floor with a sound like the dripping of lake water from that girl’s garments as she crossed the rocks toward us.
The lake was blue and wonderful in the sunlight. It was the most important thing in the world. If anything happened to destroy it I knew the world would end in that terrible, crashing moment. ”

“ I suppose the regular sky-scanners are watching it?”
His glance crossed mine and I knew he was right. I knew he was talking to me, not Williams. Of course the lake couldn’t be hidden now that it was out in plain sight. We couldn’t make a worse mistake than to rouse interest in ourselves and the lake by telling obvious lies about it....
What lake?
Like a mirage, swimming slowly back through my mind, the single memory came. Ourselves, standing on the raw, bare rock of the deathly Ring-center, looking through a rift of mist like a broad, low window a mile long and not very high. ”

“ I would suggest depth bombs. What tests I have made so far indicate the so-called water of the lake is in effect a thick skin which has so far protected the Organism from the entry of ordinary infection.
“The depth charges would serve the purpose of a hypodermic needle in introducing our weapons where they may take effect. Down there under the surface something must lie which is the heart of the dangerous being, something we have not yet seen. But destroy it we must, before it mutates any further, into a thing nothing could cope with.” ”

“ Sales was saying from far away. “Unless the lake goes a step further, we can destroy it. Perhaps it has. Perhaps it realizes that static antibodies which can’t exist outside its own bloodstreams won’t help much.
“Do you think, chief, that it might have captured still other humans and worked its basic change in their minds? Could it have implanted in men like yourself a shift in instinct so that you know only one basic drive—the Organism must be preserved?” ”

“ I put the muzzle of the revolver against my head.
And then—and then I found I could not pull the trigger! Something stopped me, some deep command in a level of the mind below conscious recognition. For an instant of frantic hope my reason tried to tell me that it was all a mistake, that there had not, after all, been wrought upon me that change which turned me from a human to an instrument in the command of another will. ”

“ I think we were still lost in dismayed wonder over Williams when the visor flickered and then framed the grim, creased face of Mobile Staff’s chief, Lewis.
There was a hunted, nightmare quality about this piling of crisis upon crisis, I thought, as I went down to the reception hall to welcome my superiors. If only I could find five minutes of peace to try again those slowly opening doors!
Mobile Staff wears black uniforms. If all Bio employees are carefully tested then Mobile men are screened with such stringent care that there is reason to marvel how anyone ever passes their tests. ”

“ Sales said. “But originally some molecule like a gene, out of a million other molecules in that Ring area, suffered a liberation of energy when a secondary ionizing particle shot past and it changed from a gene to—something else. Something that grew and grew and grew.
“Most of the development must have taken place underground. I think the organism was complete when that cave-in occurred that exposed it to the light and to our attentions. It developed amazingly, into forms so complex we may never understand them exactly.” He smiled grimly.
“If we’re lucky we never will. ”

“ From time to time we work them over with flame throwers
When the hour of balance comes, mankind may no longer be the dominant race. That’s why we keep such a close watch on all the Rings. From time to time we work them over with flame-throwers. Only atomic power, of course, would quiet that seething life permanently—which is no solution. We’ve got Rings enough right now without resorting to more atom bombs. ”

“ I wanted to jump up and slam my fist on the desk and shout that all this was phony.
I couldn’t.
Something like a tremendously powerful psychic inhibition held me down. The room swam before me for a moment with my effort to break free and I met Davidson’s eyes and saw the same swimming strain in them.
It wasn’t hypnosis.
We don’t win our posts in Bio Control until we’ve been through exhaustive tests and a lot of heavy training. None of us are hypnosis-prone. We can’t afford to be. It’s been tried.
We can’t be hypnotized except under very special circumstances safeguarded by Bio Control itself. ”

“ Dead central core and outer circle of unnatural life had vanished together into that mist which no instrument we had could penetrate—and we’ve developed a lot of stuff for seeing through fog and darkness. ”

“ Up to now we’ve come into conflict only with evolved and mutated creatures that were recognizable as animals even before genetic changes took place. One reason might be that mutated genes divide more slowly than others and tend to lose out in the race for supremacy.
“A complete mutation like—this lake—is something nobody really expected. The odds are too heavy against it. ”

“ There are four hundred and three Rings scattered all over the world and every one of them is potentially deadly.
Our Lab was north of what had been Yonkers and was a deserted, ruinous wilderness now. The atomic bomb of six years ago hadn’t hit Yonkers of course. What it struck was New York. The radiation spread far enough to wipe out Yonkers and the towns beyond it, and inland as far as White Plains—but everyone who lived through the Three-Hour War knows what the bomb did in the New York area. ”

“ In fact, its power over them and its amazing selectivity make me suspect that the original gene from which the organism developed might once have been human or close to it.
“The water image was the lake’s first attempt to fight off mankind. The attempt failed. In other words an imitation wouldn’t do. But the real thing was close at hand for experimentation.
“What happened next no one will ever know. Logically the organism must have moved forward another step in its defense against invasion by mankind. ”

“ But what lingered afterward made the real danger, the time-bomb that may quite easily lead to the wiping out of our whole civilization. We don’t know yet. All we can do is keep the Labs going and the planes out watching.
That’s the menace—the mutations.
It was familiar stuff to me. I recorded the televised report on the office ticker, punched a few buttons and turned around to look at Bob Davidson, the new hand. He’d been here for two weeks, mostly learning the ropes.
My assistant, Williams, was due for a vacation and I had about decided to take young Davidson on as a substitute. ”

“ There was some terrible, some deadly danger to the whole fabric of civilization if Fitzgerald’s message reached any other eyes than ours. I had to do something, fast.
Williams was rereading the tape. He glanced up at me across his shoulder.
“Fitz is right,” he said. “Of course. Can’t let anything get started down there. ”

“ I conceded. “Maybe we’re not alone in wanting to—to keep the lake quiet. I wonder—could something from the Ring have blanked me out deliberately, so I wouldn’t see Williams killed?”
But there wasn’t time to follow even that speculation through. I said impatiently, “The point is, Dave, one man’s death doesn’t mean a thing right now. The Ring....” I stopped unable to go on. I didn’t need to.
“What do you want me to do?” Davidson asked. That was better. I knew I could depend on him, and I might need someone dependable very soon.
“Take over here,” I said. “I’m going to see Fitzgerald. ”

“ I ordered, “and wake Williams to take over. Get the recon copter ready. Red flight.” Then I turned to Davidson.
“It’ll be routine,” I told him, “unless something unexpected happens. Not much data yet. The sky-scanners showed a cave-in and some activity around it. May be nothing but we can’t take chances. It’s Ring Seventy-Twelve.”
“That’s where the air liner crashed last week, isn’t it?” Dave asked, looking up with renewed interest. “Any dope yet on what became of the passengers?”
“Nothing. The radiations would have got them if nothing else did. ”