The Beasts in the Void Read Free Page A

boa-constrictor. Exactly
like the one I killed four years ago on the Amazon. It came to the
port and looked in at me."
    "It must be your imagination."
    "No. It was there. Let's turn back. Get out of this."
    "I wish we could."
    "You mean—?"
    "I don't know where back is. We might just as well go as we are.
Changing course doesn't help if you don't know your directions. Our
only hope is to drive on out of this cloud. If I turned I might go
right back into it."
    "Then one direction is as good as another?"
    "That's right."
    His mind wandered as he turned away. "I didn't know it would be like
this," he muttered. "I thought it would be fun—sport. I thought we'd
put on space suits and go out and make a kill. I thought—"
    "The space suits are ready. Do you want to try it?"
    He shuddered, his hanging jowls almost flapping. "You couldn't drag me out
there."
    The stuff is getting thicker in the ship.
    Jane came into my cabin. She had an odd look on her face. She said,
"There's a big tiger in the companionway."
    I got up from my bunk and suddenly she seemed to realize what she'd
said. She repeated it. Then she fell down in a faint. I put her in my
bunk and looked out into the companionway. The sparkling fog glittered
but there was no tiger.
    When she came to, she didn't seem to know where she was. Then she
smiled. "I must have been drinking too much," she said. Then she
realized where she was. "But look where it got me? Into your bunk."
    "Do you feel all right now?"
    "I guess so. I can get up now. I
do
have to get up, don't I?"
    "I think you'd better."
    After she left I did some thinking. The sparkling haze had been
outside the ship and I'd seen a water buffalo through the port. Murdo
had seen a boa-constrictor. Then the haze penetrated the hull and got
inside the ship. And Jane had seen a tiger in the companionway.
    Were they phantoms? Was Jane's tiger a tiger of the mind? Murdo swore
his snake had been real and my buffalo left a mark on the port. I sat
there trying to think. With the sparkling fog drifting around me. It
seemed to be trying to tell me something.
    Things grow worse. Today, at mess, Murdo was holding forth about a
Plutonian ice bear he'd killed. I think he was trying to cover the
gloom that has settled over us. Anyhow, he'd just got to the point
where the bear was charging down on him when we heard the roar of
thunder from outside. Maybe I'd better repeat that for the record.
We
heard a roaring through the walls of the space ship. In the void.
Nothing goes through the walls of a space ship in the void but we all
heard it and jumped to the port. And we all saw it.
    An ice bear as big as ten of the largest that ever lived in the
Plutonian ice flows. A huge ravening beast that rushed through the
void at the ship and tried to tear the port out of its metal seat with
teeth as big as the height of a man.
    The women fell back, screaming. Keebler, in his usual stupor stared
blankly as though not realizing what was going on. Kelvey looked to
Murdo for guidance. When none came he crouched behind a chair.
    Murdo fell back slowly, step by step as though his eyes were fastened
to the quartz and it was hard to pull away. I don't remember what I
did. Murdo was saying "My God—my God—my God," as though chanting a
ritual. He tore his eyes from the sight and looked at me.
    "You wanted big game, buster," I croaked. "There it is."
    "But it can't be real. It
can't
!"
    "Maybe not, but if that port gives I'll bet it won't be from vacuum
pressure."
    "Vacuum draws. It doesn't press," Kelvey babbled inanely, but nobody
paid any attention to him.
    The beast made two more charges on the ship, then drew back screaming
in rage from a snapped tooth. And all around us, there in the ship,
the sparkling fog glittered and tried to talk.
    Two hours. The beast still rages in the void outside our ship.
*
    Jane is dead. She was horribly mangled. I put her in her bunk and laid
a blanket over her and now the blanket is soaked in her blood.
    No one could