Big Baby by Jack Sharkey (christmas read aloud txt) 📖

time I was in Contact. Could it?"

Jana and Bob exchanged an uncomfortable look.

"Well, sir," the tech said, "we weren't exactly watching the sky, if you know what I mean. But it was clear when you went into Contact. And it's clear now."

His voice trailed off, uncertainly, but Jerry gave a slow thoughtful nod. "You're right, Ensign. It is, and it was. The likelihood of its clouding up for forty minutes, and then clearing again is so ridiculous I can't even consider it.... And yet, I saw—"

Jerry stopped speaking, and shook his head. Then he waved a hand at the tech, abstractedly. "Get me some coffee, Ensign. I have to think, hard."

When nightfall had cloaked the planet in dark purple folds, Jerry was still gazing intently at nothingness, racking his brain for an answer. Bob, meantime, had checked the card against the ship's files on dealing with alien menaces, and had found—much as both he and Jerry had suspected—that there was no recommendation available. The menace was new. It would have to be approached strictly ad libidum. Whatever method served to rid the planet of the menace would then, not before, be incorporated into the electronic memory of the brain on the ship, to serve future colonies who might meet a similar alien species.

"Any ideas, sir?" asked the tech, after a long silence from his superior.

"None," Jerry admitted, not turning his head. "It's pretty damned difficult to find a solution to a problem until you're sure what the problem is."

"Well," said the tech, "we played the radar all over the area where the tape said the thing was located. We got nothing. Maybe the kid's mother came back."

"Just a second—" said Jerry. "Ensign, could you rig the machine to give us, not a written transcript of that alien's description, but a drawing of it?"

"Jeepers, sir!" choked the tech, taken aback. "I don't know. I'd have to talk with the engineers."

"It should be possible. Hell, it's got to be. When I was enhosted, my mind transmitted back every bit of info on that body. A man who only knew mechanical drawing could sketch that shape, simply by following the measurement specifications as my mind recorded them. Go on, Ensign, get with it. One way or the other, I want a look at what we're dealing with."

It was nearly midnight when Bob shook Jerry gently awake and handed him a small glossy rectangle of paper.

Jerry, blinking his eyes against the sudden onslaught of light in the room as the tech threw the wall switch, stared blearily at the paper for a moment, blank and disoriented.

"It's the picture, sir," Bob said, recognizing the bafflement on his superior's face for what it was. "I finally had the bright idea of turning the problem over to the brain, aboard the ship. It followed the specifications from the tape by drawing the picture in periods."

"In what periods?" Jerry mumbled, still trying to come awake.

"Not time-periods, sir. Punctuation. Then, when it had the thing done, on a ten-by-fourteen-inch sheet of feed-paper from its roller, I had the ship's photographer take a snapshot and reduce it in size, so it looks at least as good as the average newspaper half-tone job."

Jerry nodded, absorbing the information even as his eyes crept over the image in his hands. "Looks strangely familiar," he said, studying it closely.

"If you'll pardon what sounds like a gag, sir," began the tech, "I think that the picture—in fact, we all think—"

"Yes?" said Jerry, looking at the man.

"Well, the consensus among the crew was that this baby here looks a hell of a lot like you, sir."

Jerry sat where he was, his eyes on Bob's face, for a long moment, as fingers of ice took hold of his spine. Then, with unreasoning apprehension, he turned his gaze back upon the near-photographic likeness he held. "Ensign," he said, after a minute. "This is a picture of me."

"But sir, it can't be," said the tech.

"You're wrong," said Jerry, letting the paper drop to the floor. "It can be, because it is. And all at once I think I know why."

Without warning, Jerry swung his legs over the side of the couch and jumped to his feet.

"Listen," he said urgently, "there's no time to lose. Get the hospital staff together, fast, and bring me back their best psyche-man. I need a hypnotist."

"A h-hyp—?" the tech blurted, confused, then gave an obedient nod and hurried out, shaking his head all the way to the switch-board.

"Never mind why, Doctor. Can you do it? That's all I care to know," Jerry's voice crackled, his eyes flashing with authority.

"Y-Yes, I think so," quavered the other man. "If you can be hypnotized, I mean."

"All Space Zoologists have the brainpower necessary to be perfect subjects," Jerry snapped. "Quickly, now, Doctor. I've wasted one Contact already."

"Very well, sir," said the man. "If you'll lie back, now, and make your mind blank—"

"I know, I know! Get on with it, will you!"

Bob and Jana stood back in the shadows beside the towering metal control board, listening in silence as the hypnotist put Jerry under, deeper and deeper, until his mind was readily suggestible. Then he made the statements Jerry had told him to make, and with a snap of his fingers brought the zoologist out of hypnosis.

"You heard, Ensign?" asked Jerry. "Did he do exactly as I told him to?"

"Sir!" protested the doctor.

"I mean no offense," said Jerry. "But if your words left my mind too free, too human somehow, the alien would sense it. And a ruse like this one might not work on a second attempt, once the alien had been apprised of our intent."

"He did, sir," said Bob. "Word for word, as you told it to him."

"Good," Jerry said. "Thank you, Doctor. And good night."

"Uh—yes," said the man, finally realizing he was being peremptorily dismissed after coming all the way across the town from his warm bed in the black morning hours. "Good night to you, sir."

He fumbled his way out the door, and Jana, after a glance at Bob, shut it after him. Bob stood beside the control board, waiting as Jerry once more adjusted the helmet upon his head and lay back on the couch.

"All right?" he called to the tech, as Jana, now walking nervously on tiptoe, though there'd been no injunction against noise, hurried to Bob's side and took his arm.

"Ready, sir," Bob said, keeping his voice steady.

"You've set the stopwatch?" warned Jerry.

"I depress the starter the same instant I turn on the machine," said Bob.

"All right, then," said Jerry.

Bob's right hand threw a switch.

Even as it snapped home, his left thumb had jabbed down upon the stopwatch button. The long red sweephand began clicking with relentless eagerness about the dial.

On the couch Jerry stiffened, then relaxed.

"You'd better stay with him," Bob cautioned Jana. "The machine's on automatic. If I'm not back on time, it'll take care of itself."

"Back on time?" she gasped. "But you can't be, Bob. If what he said about the timing—"

Bob shut his eyes and gripped his forehead between thumb and fingers. "Yes, of course. I'm being an idiot. This maneuver is something new. But—" he withdrew his hand from his face and smiled at the girl—"you stay with him anyhow. I'd feel better—safer—if you weren't with me and the others."

"Yes, Bob," she said, in a faint shadow of her normal voice. "Be careful."

Bob grinned with more confidence than he felt, turned and hurried from the room.

Jana moved slowly across the floor to the couch where Jerry Norcriss lay in unnatural slumber, and stood staring down at his strange, young-old face, and her eyes were bright with quiet wonder....

V

"What's this, what's this?" rasped Jerry's mind. "Where have I gotten to, now?"

"It's all right," said a soothing voice. "You're with me, now."

"Oh? Oh?" Jerry's mind said, snickering. "And who might you be?"

It was dark as he looked out through the alien eyes, but a quick patting of his paw across his face reassured him that his sharp white incisors, muzzle and stiff gray whiskers were intact and healthy.

"How can I be you?" asked Jerry. "If I'm a gray rat and you're a gray rat, what am I doing here?"

"You've come to spy on me, I know," said the soothing voice. "But see? You have nothing to fear, nothing at all. I'm not going to hurt you. You find no menace in me. Do you?"

"No. No menace. No danger. I'm safe, I'm secure, I'm warm and loved...."

"Relax," said the alien. "Relax, and let me have full control again. You can sleep if you do. You can rest. I'll take care of you, trust in that."

"Yes. Sleep. Rest. No more running, hiding, fearing...." said Jerry Norcriss, the gray rat-mind in the invisible body of another rat much like himself....

"Come on with that flashlight, damn it!" Bob raged, leading the other three crewmen through the woods. Two of them carried rifles, one had a flamethrower, and Bob himself carried one of the new bazookas with a potent short-range atomic warhead. Ollie, the man with the light, hurried up to him with a quick apology.

"Okay, okay," Bob said. "But I've got to see this dial—Ah, yes. This is the way, all right. Come on. Ollie, keep that beam so it spills on the tracking-cone dial as well as on the earth. We don't dare risk losing our way. There are only seven minutes left until Contact is broken."

"Yes, sir. I'll keep it right on there," Ollie said. "But about the lieutenant—are you sure he won't—"

"That's what the stopwatch is for. We must strike just as Contact is being broken. Any sooner, and we kill Lieutenant Norcriss with the alien. Any later, and the alien kills us. The same way it did the others who came upon it."

"But what does it do? What does it look like?" Ollie persisted.

"Damn it, there's no time to talk now! Just keep that light steady, and hurry!"

The men plunged onward through the woods, the white circle of light from the arc-torch splashing the cold leaves and damp, colorless grass with sickly, stark illumination.

"If you would only release your hold," the alien was saying. Then its mind-voice stopped.

Jerry, too, had seen the dancing white freckles that spattered the boles and branches of the nearby trees. The darkness of the woods was rent by streamers of ruler-straight light beams. They began to radiate like luminous wheel-spokes through the tangled leaves of the woods.

"Men!" cried the alien mind. "Men are coming here. Men, our enemies!"

Jerry, still in partial control of the invisible rat-body, fought the flight-impulse that began to stir beneath the unseen skin.

"Run!" shrieked the alien mind. "You fool, can't you see that we must flee this place? Quickly, or we are done for!"

"Run—Flee—" Jerry said dully, within the alien mind. "Yes. Run from men ... the eternal enemy, men. Run, hide, a dark corner, under a bush, behind a tree...."

He felt his own mind joining that of the alien in the preliminary tension that comes before flight.... Then the glaring beam of the arc-torch was full in his eyes, and the hypnotic illusion, at this, the trigger of his psyche, was shattered. And Jerry once again knew himself to be a man.

A man in the body of a rat—the animal which Jerry Norcriss loathed most of all creatures!

"Run!" screamed the alien. "Why don't you—!" Its commands ceased as it realized the difference within the mind that had invaded its body. "You again!" it cried, trying wildly to reassume the placid plump image of that unseen baby once more.

"You're too late," said Jerry, fighting its will with his own as the crewmen broke from the underbrush into the clearing, and the tech, pointing straight at him, yelled a caution to the man with the flame thrower. The man bringing up the terrible gaping mouth of that weapon halted, waiting, as the tech stared at the stopwatch in his hand.

"Five seconds!" cried the tech. "Four ... three ... two ... one.... Get it, quick!"

Jerry, still within the mind and watching with the same horrified fascination as his host, saw the puff of flame within the flame-tube of the weapon, then saw the insane red flower blossoming with its smoking yellow tendrils toward his face—

And the silent white lightning flared—

And he sat up on the couch, back in the solarium.

Jana hurried over to him.

"Did it work? Did it work, sir?" she cried. "Is Bob—"

Jerry patted her hand. "Bob's all right. He was on time. Just on time."

"I still don't understand, sir," said the nurse, sinking onto the couch beside him without waiting for an invitation. "I don't understand any of this!"

For an instant, Jerry resented this familiarity, then felt slightly overstuffed, and slipped an arm paternally across her slim shoulders.

"I'll