He encountered neither fellow crewman on his walk back to the chamber he had left so long ago. Only a few steps into it, he was brought up short by a familiar, now hateful, twittering sound.
He stopped, looked around slowly. Eventually his gaze went to the right and up, to rest on the alien. It was resting there, glued to the wall, the ugly red and yellow shape gobbling and honking softly at him as though nothing had happened.
Probably it wanted to play some more. Well, Pinback was through playing. Keeping a wary eye on the quivering Beachball, he opened the safety catches on the box and removed the pistol. He opened the chamber, reached in for one of the tranquilizer darts… and paused.
After all, bringing the alien aboard had been his idea. He had had to fight for it over the objections of the others, who had insisted that alien-gathering wasn’t part of the Dark Star’s mission. But he’d persisted.
So in more than one way, the alien was his responsibility. He almost put the dart back. Almost. Then he grew determined and slipped the innocuous-looking little sliver of metal into the chamber.
Any feelings of concern he might have retained for the Beachball had been effectively negated by its several deliberate—yes, deliberate—attempts to kill him.
It made no difference to Pinback that the alien might have had nothing of the sort in mind, because it didn’t have enough room in its mind for something like premeditation. He was going to be revenged—revenged for everything the unmentionable blob of sickening protoplasm had done to him. This time it was going back into a cage for good.
Of course, there was one minor drawback in the use of the emergency tranquilizer. He had no way of knowing whether it would even work on this particular example of otherlife. It might only make it mad.
Pinback checked to make sure the dart was seated in the chamber of the compressed-air pistol and that the air charge was up to power. The dose might also prove fatal. There was only one way to find out.
The alternative was simply to blast it to organic powder with the laser, but Pinback’s fury hadn’t gone quite that far yet. Better to give it some sort of chance.
Besides, he was afraid of the laser.
Snapping the chamber closed and raising his arm carefully, he took aim at the oscillating spheroid.
“Now it’s time to go sleepy-bye, you worthless piece of garbage.”
He pulled the trigger. A short puff from the gun and the dart struck square in the center of the alien.
There was an unexpected loud whooshing sound, and the alien shot violently toward him. Pinback ducked frantically, raising his arms to ward off the seemingly vicious charge. Then he straightened uncertainly, aware that the alien had missed him by several meters.
It continued to roar around the room, accompanied by the whooshing sound of escaping gas, bouncing haphazardly off walls and ceiling. Its speed was beginning to decrease rapidly, and the whooshing noise decreased to a faintly obscene snicker. It came to an exhausted stop in a far corner
Pinback stared at it askance, then walked over. He bent over it and touched it. There was no repetition of the burning sensation he had received when he had tried to get the rubber mouse away from it.
He felt the limp object. There was a solid lump around the bottom, consisting of the clawed feet and contracted internal organs. But when he picked it up it hung wrinkled and sagging in one hand. It was, indisputably, dead.
Geez, he muttered to himself. His anger was now as deflated as the alien. He hadn’t really wanted to kill it. Just to knock it out and get it back in its cage.
Now it was pretty pitiful-looking, all collapsed in on itself, like a jellyfish washed up on a beach. Geez, he whispered again.
The worst part of it was, now they would never know how intelligent it might have been, because the specialists back at Earth Base would never have a chance to run their tests on it—and he’d never get his medal.
Nor would it look very good in the official reports. Not that Doolittle or Talby or Boiler would care. It wasn’t part of their mission, as Doolittle had insisted. Boiler would probably find the sad state of the dead Beachball hilarious, after his own perverted fashion.
But it definitely wouldn’t look good in the report. He could visualize the entry now:
“Sergeant Pinback, in attempting to recapture one of the alien specimens—which he inadvertently allowed to escape—overdosed it with tranquilizer.”
Aw, nuts… dosage had nothing to do with it. It was the deadly hypodermic point that had done the damage. How was he to know that the alien would be so thin-skinned? He was no xenobiologist.
Besides, he could forgive a lot of things, but not that time when the alien had taken the broom away from him and beaten him to the floor with it. That was the last straw.
He pulled the tranquilizer dart out of the now-rough skin and examined it with new respect. It was a good thing the first shot had truck home. He could see the alien imitating this action, too, grabbing the missed dart and jabbing it into Pinback. He grinned slightly. That would have looked a danm sight worse in the reports.
“Sergeant Pinback, in attempting to recapture one of the alien specimens, was tranquilized by said speciman and placed in a cage.”
Why was he berating himself, then? The alien had brought this on itself. Hadn’t it nearly killed him in the elevator shaft? Why was he always tearing himself down?
He’d just done a good—no, a brave thing, going back in after a semi-intelligent alien that had nearly killed him. Yeah, Doolittle would be proud of him, and even Boiler might sit up and treat him with a little more respect.
He started back toward the alien-holding chamber with the dead Beachball in tow. Even so, he didn’t think he would mention this little episode to his fellows right away. No sense overawing them with his inordinate courage too soon. He’d slip them the information in small doses.
As for the alien, the arts-and-crafts room was equipped for just about every hobby, and he’d never taken a crack at half of them.
Taxidermy, for example…
Boiler was checking out some jury-rigged repairs they had made on the electronic head. It had been damaged when their original living quarters had blown, and now there were subtle hints that it was not recycling their waste products properly.
Since everything on the Dark Star was recycled and reused, including all their food and drink, it was vital that this particular piece of equipment work properly.
Slipping his hand deep into the open wail panel, he felt around until he located the slot between the two pressure-activated reconstituters. Gently, he hunted for any hint of a loose connection.
Not all of the crew’s “special” pictures decorated one wall in their temporary living quarters. There were a number of the finest on the walls in here. They provided a pleasing backdrop to his current activities.
He found himself thinking more and more often of women lately, despite all the preconditioning the psychometricians had laid on him—despite all the advanced autoerotic devices included on the Dark Star. He found himself seeing round shapes and curves where there should have been only sharp corners and flat sides. Found himself actually feeling warmth and blood where there was only plastic and indifferent current.
Found himself thinking of the party… that incredible party after they had won the conference championship. Found himself thinking of the last week on Earth, the final week before they entered solitary preparation for the mission, and of Diane… especially of Diane.