«That was Knut,» said Craig.
«But Mr. Knut is back there at the Center, boss. I know. I seen him with my own eyes.»
«Knut isn’t at the Center,» Craig snapped. «Knut is dead out there by the warp. The thing that’s at the Center is a Candle, masquerading as Knut!»
Craig drove like a madman, the cold claws of fear hovering over him.
Twice he almost met disaster, once when the jumper bucked through a deep drift of dust, again when it rocketed through a pool of molten tin.
«But them Candles can’t do that nohow,» argued Rastus. «They can’t get nothing right. Every time they try to be a thing they always get it wrong.»
«How do you know that?» snapped Craig. «How do you know they couldn’t if they tried? And if they could and wanted to use it against us, do you think they would let us see them do it? Through all these years they have done their best to make us lower our guard. They have tried to make us believe they were nothing but a gang of good-natured clowns. That, my boy, is super-plus psychology.»
«But why?» demanded Rastus. «Why would they want to do it? We ain’t never hurt them.»
«Ask me another one,» said Craig grimly. «The best answer is that we don’t know them. They might have a dozen reasons—reasons we couldn’t understand. Reasons no human being could understand because they wouldn’t tally with the things we know.»
Craig gripped the wheel hard and slammed the jumper up an incline slippery with dust.
Damn it, the thing that had come back as Knut was Knut. It knew the things Knut knew, it acted like Knut. It had his mannerisms, it talked in his voice, it actually seemed to think the way Knut would think.
What could a man—what could mankind do against a thing like that?
How could it separate the original from the duplicate? How would it know its own?
The thing that had come back to the Center had beaten Creepy at checkers. Creepy had led Knut to believe he was the old man’s equal at the game, although Creepy knew he could beat Knut at any time he chose. But Knut didn’t know that—and the thing masquerading as Knut didn’t know it.
So it had sat down and beaten Creepy six games hand-running, to the old man’s horror and dismay.
Did that mean anything or not?
Craig groaned and tried to get another ounce of speed out of the jumper.
«It was that old blue jigger,» said Rastus. «He was sashaying all around, and then he disappeared.»
Craig nodded. «He was in the warp. Apparently the Candles are able to alter their electronic structures so they may exist within the warp. They lured Knut into the warp by posing as human beings, arousing his curiosity, and when he stepped into its influence it opened the way for their attack.
They can’t get at us inside a suit, you see, because a suit is a photocell, and they are energy, and in a game of that sort, the cell wins every time.
«That’s what they tried to do with me. Lord knows what the warp would have done if I’d stepped into it, but undoubtedly it would have made me vulnerable in the fourth dimension or in some other way. That would have been all they needed.»
Rastus’s eyes strayed to the litter of glass on the floor by the bunk. «Sho’ wish I had me a snort of redeye,» he mourned. «Sho’ could do with a little stimulus.»
«It was clever of them,» Craig said. «A Trojan horse method of attack. First they got Knut, and next they tried to get me, and with two of them in the Center it would not have been so hard to have gotten you and Creepy.»
He slapped the wheel a vicious stroke, venting his anger.
«And the beauty of it was that no one would have known. The oxygen ship could have come from Venus and the men on board would never have been the wiser, for they would have met things that seemed like all four of us. No one would have guessed. They would have had time—plenty of time—to do anything they planned.»
«What you figure they was aimin’ to do, boss?» queried Rastus. «Figure maybe they meant to blow up that ol’ plant?»
«I don’t know, Rastus. How could I know? If they were human beings, I could make a guess, because I could put myself in their shoes and try to think the way they did. But with the Candles you can’t do that. You can’t do anything with the Candles, because you don’t know what they are.»
«You aimin’ to raise hell with dem Candles, boss?»
«With what?» snapped Craig.
«Just give me a razor,» exulted Rastus. «Maybe two razors, one for each han’. I’se a powerful dangerous man with a razor blade.»
«It’ll take more than razors,» said Craig. «More than our energy guns, for those things are energy. We could blast them with everything we had, and they’d just soak it up and laugh at us and ask for more.»
He skidded the jumper around a ravine head, slashed across the desert.
«First thing,» he declared, «is to find the one that’s masquerading as Knut. Find him and then figure out what to do with him.»
But finding the Knut Candle was easier said than done. Craig, Creepy and Rastus, clad in space suits, stood in the kitchen at the Center.
«By cracky,» said Creepy, «he must be here somewhere. He must have found him an extra-special hideout that we have overlooked.»
Craig shook his head. «We haven’t overlooked him, Creepy. We’ve searched this place from stem to stern. There isn’t a crack where he could hide.»
«Maybe,» suggested Creepy, «he figured the jig was up and took it on the lam. Maybe he scrammed out the lock when I was up there guarding that control room.»
«Maybe,» agreed Craig. «I had been thinking of that. He smashed the radio—that much we know. He was afraid that we might call for help, and that means he may have had a plan. Even now he may be carrying out that plan.»
The Center was silent, filled with those tiny sounds that only serve to emphasize and deepen a silence. The faint cluck-cluck of the machines on the floor below, the hissing and distant chortling of the atmosphere mixer, the chuckling of the water synthesizer.
«Dang him,» snorted Creepy, «I knew he couldn’t do it. I knew Knut couldn’t beat me at checkers honest—»
From the refrigerator came a frantic sound. «Me-ow—me-ow-ow-ow,» it wailed.
Rastus leaped for the refrigerator door, grabbing a broom as he went. «It’s that Mathilde cat again,» he yelled. «She’s always sneakin’ in on me. Every time my back is turned.»
He brandished the broom and addressed the door. «You jus’ wait. I’ll sure work you over with this here broom. I’ll plaster you—»
But Craig had leaped forward, snatched the Negro’s hand away from the door. «Wait!» he shouted.
Mathilde yodeled pitifully.
«But, boss, that Mathilde cat—»
«Maybe it isn’t Mathilde,» Craig rasped grimly.
From the doorway leading out into the corridor came a low purring rumble. The three men whirled about. Mathilde was standing across the threshold, rubbing with arched back against the jamb, plumed tail waving.
From inside the refrigerator came a scream of savage feline fury.
Rastus’ eyes were popping and the broom clattered to the floor. «But, boss,» he shrieked, «there’s only one Mathilde!»
«Of course, there’s only one Mathilde,» snapped Craig. «One of these is her. The other is Knut, or the thing that was Knut.»
The lock signal rang shrilly, and Craig stepped swiftly to a port, flipped the shutter up. «It’s Page,» he shouted. «Page is back again!»
He turned from the port, face twisted in disbelief. Page had gone out five hours before—without oxygen. Yet here he was, back again. No man could live for over four hours without oxygen. Craig’s eyes hardened, and furrows came between his brows. «Creepy,» he said suddenly. «You open the inner lock. You, Rastus, pick up that cat. Don’t let her get away.»