Astounding Science Fiction (British Edition) — page 106: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

104 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION a dope. He used even stronger lan- guage. Harrison was to forget about the Crawlers. When the barrow ar- rived he was to pile in with Bennett and come up at once and not be a complete fool. Spence was beginning to repeat himself when a low, ominous rumble sounded, and the floor beneath him quivered slightly. Only then did he realize that Harrison had _ his transmitter turned off, and possibly his receiver, too. “Tl break every bone in his body for this,” Spence fumed helplessly. “What a stupid trick to pull. What if he had been calling the other names, it was for his own good.” Spence was very worried about Harrison. He was new, he might do something very foolish, his voice had sounded funny just then, come to think of it. When Harrison switched on his set and spoke, the captain knew that he hadn’t been worrying for nothing. ‘Bennett is on the way up. I want to stay here for a bit. There’s been another fall, a bad one. The Crawlers are all mashed up. It would take a bucket to load them onto anything, they’re all over the place.” For a moment Harrison sounded as if he was going to be sick. Then he re- covered and went on, “But the de- tector shows one of them to be still alive, and I’m going to get it if I have to drag it out myself. You see, these last few days have gotten me down, captain. I’m sick of this job. I keep remembering things. All those cities we bombed, and that time the Crawl- ers came out of that cave and tried to contact us by drawing math sym- bols on the ground, and the way we gassed them without even acknowl- edging their signals.” “But we hadn’t time,” Spence argued. “You know that. And the only telepaths good enough to mesh with them were halfway across the galaxy, and couldn’t have reached here in time to do any good. We had to make it a surprise attack or nothing.” “I know, I know. But we didn’t even—”’ Harrison couldn’t put it into words. He knew he was right, but the captain was right, too. He changed the subject. ““How are we for time, sir?’’ ‘Six and a half minutes,” replied Spence, and thought incredulously, six and a half minutes ! Just then Bennett came into the control room, still wheezing and smothering an occasional cough. He wasn’t much the worse for his near strangulation. Spence nodded at him without turning, and thought angrily that this was mutiny. All he said was, ‘“‘Harrison. Bennett’s here. Come back at once.” Harrison apparently didn’t hear him. He said, ““That’s good.”” Whether he meant the time or Bennett was an open question. Then he went on in a low, conversational tone, ‘“‘More stuff is coming down, mostly in the side tunnels which aren’t very strongly built. I’m standing beside the alien which the detector says is alive. Funny thing. I tried to drag it out just now and it came to pieces in my hands. I don’t get it. The detector says it is alive, but which piece of it is alive? I’m going to have a closer look—” Harrison was beginning to talk to himself, thought Spence. That was bad. Next thing he’d begin to scream or laugh, and then he’d want to take off his helmet for a smoke. Quietly, coaxingly, the captain began repeat- ing over and over the command to return to the ship, trying desperately to get hypnotic control over the mind that was so far gone that an appeal to reason was useless. Suddenly Harrison said in a pleased EComichooks.co im