"I want you to tell me how you happened to keep alive—or here, rather—though everyone else has vanished. Tell me that, and how you managed to survive the past two years." This, he thought with some satisfaction, was a fair test.
He watched her face closely as she began to answer. Then—again that sensation of physical force, that feeling of mind-muddling probing that he'd experienced a few minutes before ... and the girl slumped to the ground like a devitalized zombie. "Damn me for a stupid, thoughtless ass!" Camp swore, and felt her Pulse. She was alive, and her heartbeat was strong and regular; it seemed an ordinary faint, but he didn't dare take any chance.
There was the awful possibility that the only other human being on the Earth might die!
She had received a bad drenching when she had fallen into the lake, he thought; her skin was still wet. That, and the shock of their sudden encounter, must have taken heavy toll of her strength. He gathered her up in his strong arms—she was so like a little child!—and carried her to the boat.
As he set her down he thought vaguely that she must have lost weight. Her hair was a little longer, too, as he would have wished it to be. Altogether she was nearer to his ideal than she had been when last he saw her, and in no way had the certain privations of her solitude affected her beauty.
He placed her gently in one of the small bunks, drawing the blankets up around her chin, and set canned broth heating on the incredibly tiny electric stove. He had noticed, during the trip over, that the generator seemed to be out of kilter, and he took this opportunity of repairing it.
It was getting rather dark now, and working partly by touch, partly by the illumination of a droplight, he had jerry-rigged the cruiser's generator to operate satisfactorily. Fumbling a bit in the cramped space of the motor-well he reconnected the mechanism and started the motor. Tiny sparks inside the housing of the generator assured him that his work was serviceable, and he turned away satisfied.
He stiffened as he heard a little moan from Lois's bunk. She must be coming to, he thought. A full-grown scream yanked him bodily from the hatch, and he skidded madly into the cabin.
Lois was tossing feverishly in the narrow bunk, writhing in the nastiest convulsions Camp had ever seen. He grasped her wrist.
"There, there," he crooned soothingly, smoothing the damp hair back from her sweat-slicked face. Her eyes opened wide, and she stared agonizedly at him. Another raw scream ripped her throat, and she clawed wildly at Camp's restraining grip.
Insane or delirious, he thought. He muttered what he hoped to be calming words as he frantically rummaged through the lockers in search of a medicine kit, intending to give her a sedative. Looking back at her as her screams whispered away, he saw that her normally creamy skin was darkening.
"What the hell?" he whispered. His quick mind, accustomed to instantly analyzing the split-second phases of Venusian botany, tore the situation apart and reintegrated it satisfactorily. Her spasms had begun when he started the motors. Was it possible that the stale oil in the fuel tanks had suffered a deterioration causing it to emit poisonous fumes? With an exclamation he hurried to the controls and switched off both motors. Almost at once the girl's moans were stilled and her wild tossings ceased, with no more movement than an occasional twitch of relaxing muscles. Her tawny eyes closed, and her breathing again became regular and effortless.
If the motors were throwing off dangerous gases ... Camp dragged a mattress and blankets from the other bunk and fixed a fairly comfortable bed on deck, on the windward side of the twin motors and out of range of any potential fumes.
Back in the cabin, he took Lois's wrist to check her pulse; she had fallen into a quiet, easy sleep. Pulse normal again, he thought, and thank God for that! But—her wrist was still wet! She'd had plenty of time to dry off since he had found her. Curiously he wiped away the film of moisture from her skin, and felt it again. Cold, rather, and not a little slimy. No—not slimy, he decided, but slippery ... like a seal's smooth hide.
With a baffled shake of his blond head he picked the girl up and easily carried her up the short ladder to the deck. Gently he deposited her on the mattress and returned to his work.
The starter switch stared at him like a cold, unwinking, metallic eye. He petulantly stabbed the button. The motors purred again.
And again the air was torn by that shrill scream! One desperate leap pulled Camp over the hatch coaming to the deck. For a split-second too long he stared at an empty mattress—and out of the corner of his eye saw something slither over the side of the boat. He dashed to the rail and stared through gathering darkness into the water; there was nothing to be seen but a widening series of ripples....
The black night pressed closer upon him, and a chill wind sowed through the trees on the shore. But it was quiet—so very quiet! Then Marvin's raucous tones sounded, somewhere aboard the cruiser, pushing the heavy, menacing stillness aside and shaking Camp from his shocked immobility.
Something had reached aboard the cruiser—slipped aboard at a point not three meters from an alert, quick-nerved man whose existence had previously depended on his ability to scent danger ... something was out there now, chuckling inhumanly as it lugged the girl off to whatever doom had overtaken the rest of the Earth's teeming millions....
He was sure that he had seen a bit of the bright red skirt that the girl had worn, and a slim arm crooked over the side of the boat ... but something, he felt, was wrong, and he wished devoutly for the automatic he had left back at the space-sphere.
Had the thing really abducted Lois? Somehow he doubted that the girl had been seized against her will. So close together had been her body and the thing's blurred form, he thought that they might have been fervidly embracing each other.
IV. Twin Trouble
Camp stirred restlessly and awoke from a night filled with uneasy dreams. No solution of the preceding day's insane events had occurred to him while he slept, or if one had, he failed to recall it. Philosophically he turned on the stove and prepared for breakfast. He decided, after running an exploratory hand over his chin, to skip that day's shaving, and began to tumble through the cruiser's supplies, bringing to light a sealed tin of bacon. He opened it with the aid of a screwdriver, being unable to locate a can-opener, and carefully inhaled the aroma of the meat. He hadn't come several million kilometers to die of simple food poisoning.
A frying pan was placed on the stove, and the bacon arranged in careful rows on the hot surface. He smiled almost happily as the cabin became filled with the crisp breakfast smell, and set coffee to boil. He had found that given a good morning meal, a man could tackle almost anything with a fair hope of success.
His breakfast was set out soon, and he hungrily munched the crisp strips of bacon. Through a cabin port he could see Isle Royale and the town of Johns in the distance. He had cruised about a kilometer or so out before turning in, searching for any sign of whatever had taken Lois, recklessly exposing himself in the hope of drawing the thing from concealment. The past evening seemed like an unpleasant dream, until—
A shadow darkened his plate, and he looked up.
"You," he stated coldly, "are about the most irregular creature I've ever met."
"Nuts!" Marvin lipped, and scuttled to the protection of the leg of his master's coverall.
Lois smiled brightly, and sat down opposite the staring Camp. "Most men are irritable before breakfast," she said. "Finish your bacon, and maybe then you'll be in a better mood."
Camp obediently speared a chunk of bacon, looked distastefully at it, and put it down again.
"How did you get here?" he demanded. "And what the hell, if you'll pardon my language, happened to you last night?"