The Mind Thing

CHAPTER NINETEEN

For what seemed an eternity, nothing happened. Night fell, the time for sleep. Doc went around the house, upstairs and down, turning on the lights, all of the lights.

And then the lights went out, all together.

The generator? Of course the generator. The gasoline motor that ran it was not out of fuel; there was enough in the tank to run it for several more days. But either the generator or the motor that ran it had stopped.

The enemy had taken another host. A mouse? Probably a mouse—a domestic mouse if there were any in the cellar; otherwise a field mouse that had been taken over and directed to find a way in somehow, had got through the housing of the gasoline engine or the motor that it ran, and that mouse would now be dead, smeared around a commutator perhaps… And there was no use trying to restart the engine or the generator—there were more mice wherever the first one had come from. Or perhaps it had not been a mouse at all. Even an insect, directed by an intelligent mind, can so place itself as to die in the process of shorting a motor or a generator.

Darkness.

Above all, he must fight getting sleepy. Sleep would be the end.

A moon came up. It was only a three-quarter moon but it was bright in a clear, starry sky. He could see outside the house now, in all directions. And enough moonlight came in the front windows so he could see fairly well in the living room—well enough to pace without risking falling over anything. He had a flashlight, but even with the one extra battery he had for it, it wasn’t going to last the whole night; he would have to use it sparingly.

How long would he be able to stay awake? Another twenty-four hours, he thought, despite the fact that he’d slept so little the night before and already felt tired.

He was getting hungry, too, but he decided not to eat anything. Food can tend to make one sleepy, especially when one is already tired before eating. A hungry man can stay awake more easily than a full one—at least up to the point where starvation or malnutrition weakens him. That wouldn’t happen here; he knew that he could go without food for a much longer period than he could go without sleep.

He paced, thought, tried to think harder. Somehow he had to counterattack. But how?

In what way was the enemy vulnerable? Was it incorporeal or did it have a body of its own—perhaps dormant while it was using a host? He thought it must have a body: first, because he found it almost impossible to think of an incorporeal entity; second, because he was remembering now one strange thing in connection with the suicide of Siegfried Gross. A jar of meat stock and a bowl of gravy had disappeared from Elsa Gross’s refrigerator that night. Gross would hardly have eaten them in that form; and he would have had no reason to pour them down the sink. But they were prime ingredients for a nutrient solution that should feed anyone or anything with a bodily chemistry remotely similar to that of a terrestrial creature. Had Gross been taken as a host for the purpose of feeding the enemy before killing himself? It sounded grotesque, yes—but what, in everything that had been happening, did not sound grotesque? It seemed at least possible.

He went out to the kitchen and made as brief use as possible of the flashlight to make another pot of coffee. When it was ready he returned with a cup of it and again sat on the arm of the sofa staring out into the bright moonlight.

Where would the enemy’s body be? Quite probably, since there must be some limit to the range at which it could operate, it was nearby; this house was the focus of the attack. Quite possibly within sight of the house; conceivably even inside it. He didn’t think the enemy would have taken that chance, but the fact that it might have did open up one possible line of counteroffensive. Not tonight, but as soon as it was light tomorrow, he’d search the inside of the house thoroughly, ready to shoot anything alive that he found.

It was a long, long night, and the lonesomest night he’d ever spent. But it did end.

When it was light enough, he searched the house thoroughly, room by room, and then the basement. He didn’t know, of course, what he was looking for, or how small or how large an object it might be, but unless the enemy had the ability to disguise itself as a small household object, or to become invisible, both of which he doubted, he convinced himself that it wasn’t there. In the basement he found that his guess about the generator had been right. Something like a mouse had crawled into it through the housing and was now nothing more than a red smear. He could have cleaned it and started it again, but to what purpose? If the enemy didn’t want him to have electricity, another small something would stop either the generator or the motor the moment he went back upstairs.

Only one other possibility had come to him during the endless night. Since the enemy was the helpless prisoner, in a sense, of any host he took, and could escape to take another host only with the death of the current one, then there was one way in which he, Doc, might have a chance to turn the tables. If he could slightly wound and capture, or capture without wounding, whatever host might be used against him next—and keep that host alive under circumstances in which it could not bring about its own death, then the enemy would be helpless for a while. And that might be perhaps long enough to let him get into town alive and safe.

But would he have such a chance?

He stared up at the ceiling and felt sudden hope when he saw a moth flying around up there. Could it be? A moth was not dangerous in any way, but maybe the enemy was controlling it—was using the moth as a spy to keep closer track of him than could be done otherwise.

Casually he got up and strolled into the storage room, closing the door behind him. He went to work quickly and made a very crude butterfly net. He bent a coathanger into an approximate circle. He ripped apart a sleeping bag to get the piece of cheesecloth that was a part of it, the part that could be propped up over the head to keep insects away, and fastened it around the wire loop made from the coathanger. He managed to tie this onto the end of a broom handle. It looked like a far cry from a real butterfly net, but it might serve the purpose of one.

The moth was still circling. It took several passes, but he got it. He took it out of the net very carefully so as not to injure even a wing. Then, in the kitchen, he found a box of kitchen matches and emptied it; he put the moth inside and closed the lid. The moth would live for a while, long enough for him to make his getaway. That is, if the moth was—

He might as well find out right away, he decided. Getting the shotgun, he opened the front door and stepped through it, looked around and saw nothing to be frightened of. Not even in the air above.

He took a deep breath and started walking. He got only about ten paces before something made him look upward again. A chicken hawk, a big one, had just taken off from the eaves of the house and was rising to circle. It dived at him, and it was aiming to kill, not just to frighten him back into the house.

He got the shotgun up just in time and pulled the trigger when the chicken hawk was only eight or ten feet over his head and coming like the guided missile it was. Blood and feathers flew, some right into his face. The rest of what was left of the bird, knocked out of its straight-line trajectory, hit the ground only two feet away from him.

He ran back for the house. He washed the blood and feathers off his face and brushed his clothes. Then he opened the kitchen matchbox and released the moth—the moth that was only a moth, and not a host of the enemy. His idea had been a good one, but the enemy hadn’t intended to give him that simple a way of winning.