Impulse
Astounding Science Fiction – September 1938
(1938)*
Eric Frank Russell

Their number was legion! Their intelligence was superhuman!
They could read minds! That is—when there was mind.

-

	It was his receptionist's evening tuning off, and Dr. Main had to answer the waiting-room buzzer himself. Mentally cursing the prolonged absence of Tod Mercer, his general factotum, he closed the top of the burette, took the beaker of neutralized liquid from beneath, and set it on a shelf.

	Hastily, he thrust a folding spatula into a vest pocket, rubbed his hands together, gave a brief glance around the small laboratory. Then he carried his tall, spare form to the waiting room.

	The visitor was sprawled in an easy chair. Dr. Blain looked him over, and saw a cadaverous individual with mackerel eyes, mottled skin, and pale bloated hands. The fellow's clothes didn't fit him much better than a sack.

	Blain weighed him up as a case of pernicious ulcers, or else a hopeful seller of insurance that he had no intention of buying. In any event, he decided, the man's expression had a weird twist. It gave him the willies.

	"Dr. Blain. I believe?" said the man in the chair. His voice gargled slowly, uncannily, and the sound of it grew pimples down Blain's spine.

	Without waking for a reply, and with his dead optics fixed on the standing Blain, the visitor continued "We are a cadaverous individual, with mackerel eyes, mottled skin, and pale, bloated hands."

	Sitting down abruptly. Dr. Main grasped the arms of his chair until his knuckles stood out like blisters. His visitor gargled slowly and imperturbably on.

	"Our clothes don't fit us much better than a sack. We are a case of pernicious ulcers, or else a seller of insurance which you have no intention of buying. Our expression has a strange twist and it gives you the willies."

	The speaker rolled a rotting eye which leered, with horrible lack of luster, at the thunderstuck Blain. He added. "Our voice gargles, and the sound of it raises pimples on your spine. We have decaying eyes that leer at you with lack of luster that you consider horrible."

	With a mighty effort. Blain leaned forward, red faced, trembling. His iron-gray hairs were erect on the back of his neck. Before he could open his mouth, his visitor spoke his unuttered words for him: "Good heavens! You've been reading my very thoughts!"

	The fellow's cold optics remained riveted to Mam's astounded face while the latter shot to his feet. Then he said, briefly, simply. "Be seated."

	Blain remained standing. Small globules of perspiration crept through the skin of his brow, trickled down his tired, hard face.

	More urgently, warningly, the other gulped. "Be seated!"

	His legs strangely weak at the knees, Blain sat. He stared at the ghastly pallor of his visitor's features, and stammered. "W-who the devil are you?"

	"That!" He tossed Blain a clipping.

-

	A casual look, followed by one far more intent, then Blain protested. "But this is a newspaper report about a corpse being stolen from a morgue."

	"Correct." agreed the being opposite.

	"But I don't understand" Blain's strained features showed his puzzlement.

	"This." said the other, pointing a colorless finger at his sagging vest, "is the corpse."

	"What!" For the second lime. Blain came to his feet. The clipping dropped from his nerveless fingers, fluttered to the carpet. He towered over the thing in the chair, expelled his breath in a load hiss, and sought vainly for words.

	"This is the body." repeated the claimant. His voice sounded as if it was bring bubbled through thick oil. He pointed to the clipping. "You failed to notice the picture. Look at it. Compare the face with the one that we have got."

	"We?" Blain queried, his mind in a whirl.

	"We! There are many of us. We commandeered this body. Sit down." 

	"But—"

	"Sit down!'' The creature in the chair slid a cold, limp hand inside his sloppy jacket, lugged out a big automatic, and pointed it awkwardly. The weapon's muzzle gaped hugely to Blain's view. He sat down, recovered the clipping, and stared at the picture.

	The caption said. "The late James Winstanley Clegg, whose body mysteriously vanished last night from the Simonstown morgue.

	Blain looked at his visitor, then at the picture, then at his visitor again. The two were the same: undoubtedly the same. Blood began to pound in his arteries.

	The automatic dropped, wavered, lifted up once more. "Your questions are anticipated," slobbered the late James Winstanley Clegg. "No, this is not a case of spontaneous revival of a cataleptic. Your idea is ingenious, but it does not explain the thought reading."

	"Then of what is this a case?" demanded Blain, with sudden courage.

	"Confiscation." His eyes jerked unnaturally. "We have entered into possession. Before is a man possessed." He permitted himself a ghoulish chuckle. "It seems that in life this brain was endowed with a sense of humor."

	"Nevertheless, I can't—"

	"Silence!" The gun wagged to emphasize the command. "We shall talk: you will listen. We shall comprehend your thoughts."

	"All right." Dr. Blain lay back in his chair, kept a wary eye on the door. He felt convinced that he had to deal with a madman. Yes, a maniac—despite the thought-reading, despite that picture on the clipping.

	Two days ago." gargled Clegg, or what once had been Clegg. "a so-called meteor landed outside this town.

	"I read about it," Blain admitted. "They looked for it, but failed to find it."

	"That phenomenon was actually a space-vessel." The automatic sagged in the flabby hand; its holder rested the weapon on his lap. "It was a space-vessel which had carried us from our home world of Glantok. The vessel was exceedingly small by your standards—but we, too, are small. Very small. We are submicroscopic, and our number is myriad.

	"No, not intelligent germs." The ghastly speaker stole the thought from his listener's mind. "We are less even than those." He paused while he searched around for words more explicit. "In the mass we resemble a liquid. You might regard us as an intelligent virus."

	"Oh!" Blain struggled to calculate the number of jumps necessary to reach the door, and do it without revealing his thoughts.

	"We Glantokians are parasitical in the sense that we inhabit and control the bodies of lesser creatures. We came here, to your world, while occupying the body of a small Glantokian mammal." He coughed with a viscous rumble deep down in his gullet, then continued.

	"When we landed and emerged, an excited dog chased our creature, and caught it, We caught the dog. Our creature died when we deserted it. The dog was useless for our purpose, but it served to transport us into your town, and find us this body. We acquired the body. When we left the dog it lay on its back and died."

	The gate creaked with a sudden rasping sound that brought Blain's taut nerves to snapping point. Light footsteps pit-patted up the asphalt path toward the front door. He waited with bated breath, ears alert; eyes wide with apprehension.

	"We took this body, liquefied the congealed blood, loosened the rigid joints, softened the dead muscles, and made it walk. It seems that its brain was fairly intelligent in life, and even in death, its memories remain recorded. We utilize this dead brain's knowledge to think in human terms, and to converse with you after your own fashion."

	The approaching footsteps were near, very near. Blain shifted his feet to a solid position on the rug, tightened his grip on the arms of his chair, and fought to keep his thoughts under control. The other took not the slightest notice, but kept his haggard face turned to Blain, and continued slushily to mouth his words.

	"Under our control, the body stole these clothes, and this weapon. Its own defunct mind recorded the weapon's purpose and told us how it is used. It also told us about you."

	"Me?" Startled, Dr. Blain leaned forward, braced his arms, and calculated that his intended spring would barely beat the lift of the opposing automatic. The feet outside had reached the steps.

	"It is not wise," warned the creature who claimed to be a corpse. He raised his gun with lethargic hand. "Your thoughts are not only observed, but their conclusions anticipated."

-

	Blain relaxed. The feet were tripping up the steps to the front door.

	"A dead body is a mere makeshift," the other mouthed. "We must have a live one, with little or no organic disability. As we increase, we must have more bodies. Unfortunately, the susceptibility of nervous systems is in direct proportion to the intelligence of their owners." He gasped, then choked with the same liquid rattle as before.

	"We cannot guarantee to occupy the bodies of the intelligently conscious without sending them insane in the process. A disordered brain is less use to use than a recently dead one, and no more use than a wrecked machine would be to you."

	The patter of leather ceased; the front door opened, and somebody entered the passage. The door clicked shut. Feet moved along the carpet toward the waiting room.

	"Therefore," continued the human who was not human, "we must occupy the intelligent while they are too deeply unconscious to be affected by our permeation, and we must be in complete possession when they awake. We must have the assistance of someone able to treat the intelligent in the manner we desire, and do it without arousing general suspicion. In other words, we require the cooperation of a doctor."

	The awful eyes bulged slightly. Their owner added, "Since this inefficient body is beyond even our power to animate much longer, we must have a fresh, live, healthy one as soon as it can be obtained."

	The feet in the passage hesitated, stopped. The door opened. At that instant, the dead Clegg stabbed a pallid finger at Blain, and burbled, "You will assist us"—the finger swerved toward the door—"and that body will do for the first."

	The girl in the doorway was young, fair-haired, pleasingly plump. She poised there, one hand concealing the crimson of her small, half-opened mouth. Her blue eyes were wide with fearful fascination as they gazed at the blanched mask behind the pointing finger.

	There was a moment's deep silence, while the digit maintained its fateful gesture. Its owner's features became subject to progressive achromatism, grew more hueless, more ashy. His optics—dead balls in frigid sockets—suddenly glittered with minute specks of light, green light, hellish. He struggled clumsily to his feet, teetered backward and forward on his heels.

	The girl gasped. Her eyes lowered, saw the automatic in a hand escaped from the grave. She screamed on a note weak because of its height. She screamed as if she was surrendering her soul to the unknown. Then, as the living dead tottered toward her, she closed her eyes, and slumped.

	Blain got her just before she hit the floor. He covered the distance in three frantic leaps, caught her smoothly molded body, saved it from bruising contact. He rested her head upon the carpet, patter her cheeks vigorously.

	"She's fainted," he growled, in open anger. "She may be a patient, or may have come to summon me to a patient. An urgent case, perhaps."

	"Enough!" The voice was curt, despite its eerie bubbling. The gun pointed directly at Blain's brow. "We see, from your thoughts, that this fainting condition is a temporary one. Nevertheless, it is opportune. You will take advantage of the situation, place the body under an anesthetic, and we shall claim if for our own."

-

	From his kneeling position beside the girl, Blain looked up and said, slowly and deliberately, "I shall see you in hell!"

	"No need to have spoken the thought," remarked the creature. He grimaced horribly, took two jerky steps forward. "You may do it yourself, or else we shall do it with the aid of your own knowledge and your own flesh. A bullet through your heart, we take possession of you, repair the wound, and you are ours.

	"Damn you!" he cursed, stealing the words from Blain's own lips. "We could use you in any case, but we prefer a live body to a dead one."

	Throwing a hopeless glance around the room, Dr. Blain uttered a mental prayer for help—a prayer cut short by the grin of understanding on his opponent's face. Getting up from his knees, he lifted the girl's limp form, carried her through the door, along the passage, and into his surgery. The thing that was the body of Clegg stumbled grotesquely behind him.

	Gently lowering the girl to a chair, Blain rubbed her hands and wrists, patter her cheeks again. Faint color crept back to her skin; her eyes fluttered. Blain stepped to a cupboard, slid aside its glass doors, grasped a bottle of sal volatile. Something hard prodded him between his shoulder blades. It was the automatic.

	"You forget that your mind-processes are like an open book. You are trying to revive the body, and are playing for time." The sickly countenance behind the weapon forced its facial muscles into a lopsided scowl. "Place the body on that table and anesthetize it."

	Unwillingly, Dr. Blain withdrew his hand from the cupboard. He picked up the girl, laid her on the examination tale, switched on the powerful lamp that hung directly overhead.

	"More meddling!" commented the other. "Turn off that lamp—the one already burning is quite sufficient."

	Blain turned off the lamp. His face drawn with agitation, but head erect, his fists bunched, he faced the menacing weapon, and said, "Listen to me. I'll make you a proposition."

	"Nonsense!" The former Clegg wandered around the table with slow, dragging steps. "As we remarked before, you are playing for time. Your own brain advertises the fact." He stopped abruptly as the recumbent girl murmured vague words, and tried to sit up. "Quick! The anesthetic!"

	Before either could move, the girl sat up. She came upright, and looked straight into a ghastly face that moped and moved a foot from her own features. She shuddered, and said, pitifully, "Let me out of her. Let me out. Please!"

	A bloated hand reached out to push her. She lay down to avoid contact with the loathsome flesh.

	Taking advantage of the slight diversion, Blain slid a hand behind his back, felt for an ornamental poker hanging on the wall. The gun swung up even as his fingers found the impromptu weapon, and curled around its cool metal.

	"You forget yourself." Pin-point fires sparkled in the other's blotchy orbs. "Mental understanding is not limited in direction. We see you even when these eyes are elsewhere." The gun moved to indicate the girl. "Tie that body down."

-

	Obediently, Dr. Blain found straps, fastened the girl securely to the table. His gray hair was limp, his face moist, as he bent over her and threaded the buckles. He looked at her with courage hardly justified, and whispered, "Patience—do not fear." He threw a significant glance at the clock ticking upon the wall. The instrument's hands indicated two minutes before eight.

	"So you expect aid," effervesced the tones of a corporate myriad. "Tod Mercer, your handyman, who ought to have been here before now. You think he might be of help, though you have little faith in what few wits he has got. In your opinion, he is a dumb ox—too stupid to know his feet from his hands."

	"You devil!" swore Dr. Blain, at this recital of his thoughts.

	"Let this Mercer come. He will be of use—to us! There are enough of us for two bodies—and even a live fool is better than an educated corpse." Anemic lips twisted in a snarl that revealed dry teeth. "Meanwhile, get busy with that body."

	"I don't think I have any ether," Blain protested.

	"You have something that will do. Your cortex shouts it! Be speedy, lest we lose patience and take you at the cost of your sanity."

	Swallowing hard, Blain opened a drawer and extracted a nasal frame. He clipped on its cotton gauze pad, placed the frame over the frightened girl's nose. He felt safe in giving her a reassuring wink. A wink is not a thought.

	Opening the cupboard once more, Blain stood in front of it, summoned all his faculties, and compelled his mind to recite, "Ether, ether, ether." At the same time, he forced his hand toward a bottle of concentrated sulphuric acid. He made a mighty effort to achieve his dual purpose, urged his fingers nearer and nearer the bottle. He got it.

	Straining every fiber of his being to do one thing while his mind was fixed upon another, he turned around, withdrawing the glass stopper as he turned. Then he stood still, the open bottle in his right hand. The figure of death was immediately in front of him, gun raised.

	"Ether," sneered the vocal cords of Clegg. "Your conscious mind yelled 'Ether!' while your subconscious mind whispered. 'Acid!' Do you think your inferior intelligence can cope with ours? Do you think you can destroy that which is already dead? You fool!" The gun inched forward. "The anesthetic—without further delay."

	Offering no reply, Dr. Blain rammed the stopper into its neck, replaced the bottle whence he had got it. More deliberately, moving with utmost slowness, he crossed the floor to a smaller cupboard, opened it, took out a small bottle of ether. He placed the bottle on the radiator, and made to close the cupboard.

	"Take it off!" croaked the uncanny voice, with high-pitched urgency. The gun emitted a warning click as Blain snatched the bottle. "So you hoped the radiator would make the stuff vaporize rapidly enough to burst the bottle, eh?"

	Dr. Blain said nothing. Taking as much time as possible, he conveyed the volatile liquid to the table. The girl watched his approach, her eyes wide with apprehension. She gave a low sob. Blain flung a glance at the clock, but, quick as the glance was, his tormenter caught the thought behind it, and grinned.

	"He is here, now."

	"Who is here?" demanded Blain.

	"Your man, Mercer. He is outside, and just about to enter the front door. We perceive the futile wanderings of his sluggish mind. You have not overestimated what little intelligence he does possess."

	The front door opened in confirmation of the speaker's prophecy. The girl struggled to raise her head, hope in her eyes.

	"Prop her mouth open with something," articulated the voice under alien control. "We shall enter through the mouth." He paused, as heavy feet scuffled on the front door mat. "And call that food in here. We shall use him also."

	His veins bulging on his forehead, Dr. Blain called. "Tod! Come here!" He found a dental gag, toyed with its ratchet.

	Excitement thrilled his nerves from head to feet. No gun could shoot two ways at once. If he could wangle the idiotic Mercer into the right position, and put him wise—If he could be on one side, and Tod on the other—

	"Don't try it," advised the animated Clegg. "Don't even think it. If you do, we shall end up by having you both."

	Tod Mercer lumbered into the room, his heavy soles thumping the rug. He was a big man, with thick shoulders jutting below a plump, moonlike face that sprouted two days' growth. He stopped when he saw the table and the girl. His great, wide, stupid eyes roamed from the girl to the doctor.

	"Heck, Doc," he said, with an uneasy fidget, "I got me a puncture, and had to change tires on the road."

	"Never mind about that," came a sardonic rumble right behind him. "You're in plenty of time."

	Tod turned around sluggishly, twisting his boots as if each weighed a ton. He stared at the thing that had been Clegg, and said, "Beg pardon, Mister. I didn't know you was there."

	His cowlike eyes wandered disinterestedly over the living corpse, over the pointing automatic, then slewed toward the anxious Blain. Tod opened his mouth to say something. He closed the mouth; a look of faint surprise came into his fat features; his eyes swiveled back and found the automatic again.

	This time, the look didn't last one tenth of a second. His eyes realized what they saw. He swung a hamlike fist with astounding swiftness, slammed it into the erstwhile Clegg's awful features. The blow was dynamite, sheer dynamite. The cadaver sent down with a crash that shook the room.

	"Quick!" screamed Dr. Blain. "Get the gun." He vaulted the intervening table—girl and all—landed heavily, made a wild kick at the weapon still gripped in a flabby hand.

	Tod Mercer stood abashed, his eyes turning this way and that. The automatic exploded thunderously; its slug nicked the tubular metal edge of the table, ricocheted with a noise like that of a buzz saw, and ripped a foot of plaster from the opposite wall.

	Blain kicked frantically at a ghastly wrist, missed it when its owner jerked it aside. The gun boomed again. Glass tinkled in the farther cupboard. The girl on the table screamed shrilly.

	The scream penetrated Mercer's thick skull, and brought action. Slamming down a great boot, he imprisoned a rubbery wrist beneath his heel, plucked the automatic from cold fingers. He hefted the weapon, pointed it.

	"You can't kill it like that," shouted Blain. He jabbed Tod Mercer to emphasize his words. "Get the girl out of here. Jump to it, man, for Heaven's sake!"

	Blain's urgency brooked no argument. Mercer handed over the automatic, moved to the table, ripped the straps from the weeping girl. His huge arms plucked her up, bore her from the room.

	Down on the floor, the pilfered body writhed and struggled to get up. Its rotting eyes had disappeared. Their sockets were now filled with swirling pools of emerald luminosity. Its mouth gaped as it slowly regurgitated a bright green phosphorescence. The spawn of Glantok was leaving its host!

	The body sat up with its back to the wall. Its limbs jerked and twitched in nightmarish postures. It was a fearful travesty of a human being. Green—bright and living green—crept sinuously from its eyes and mouth, formed twisting, swirling snakes and pools upon the floor.

	Blain gained the door in one gigantic leap, snatching the ether bottle from the table as he passed. He stood in the doorway, trembling. Then he flung the bottle in the center of the seething green. He flicked his automatic lighter, tossed it after the bottle. The entire room boomed into a mighty blast of flame that immediately became a fiery hell.

-

	The girl clung tightly to Dr. Blain's arm while they stood by the roadside, and watched the house burn. She said, "I came to call you to my kid brother. We think he's got measles."

	"I'll be along soon," Blain promised.

	A sedan roared up the road, stopped near them with engine still racing. A policeman put his head out, and shouted, "What a blaze! We saw the glare a mile back along the road. We've called the fire department."

	"They'll be too late, I'm afraid," said Blain.

	"Insured?" asked the policeman sympathetically.

	"Yes."

	"Everybody out of the house?"

	Blain nodded an affirmative, and the policeman said, "We happened to be out this way looking for an escaped nut." The sedan rolled forward.

	"Hey!" Blain shouted. The sedan stopped again. "Was this madman's name James Winstanley Clegg?"

	"Clegg?" came the driver's voice from the other side of the sedan. "Why, that's the fellow whose body walked out of the morgue when the attendant had his back turned for a minute. Funny thing, they found a dead mongrel in the morgue right by where the missing body ought to have been. The reporters are starting to call it a werewolf, but it's still a dog to me."

	"Anyway, this fellow isn't Clegg." chimed in the first policeman. "He's Wilson. He's small, but nasty. This is what he looks like." He stretched an arm from the automobile, handed Blain a photograph. Blain studied the picture in the light of the rising flames. It bore not the slightest resemblance to his visitor of that evening.

	"I'll remember that face," Dr. Blain commented, handing the photograph back.

	"Know anything about this Clegg mystery?" inquired the driver.

	"I know that he's dead," Blain answered truthfully.

	Pensively, Dr. Blain watched flames leap skyward from his home. He turned to the gaping Mercer, and said, "What beats me is how you managed to hit that fellow without him anticipating your intention, and plugging you where you stood."

	"I saw the gun, and I 'it 'im." Mercer spread apologetic hands. "I saw 'e'd got a gun, and I 'it 'im without thinking."

	"Without thinking!" murmured Blain.

	Dr. Blain chewed his bottom lip, stared at the mounting fire. Roof timbers caved in with a violent crash; a flood of sparks poured upward.

	With his mind, but not his ears, he heard faint threnodies of an alien wail that became weaker and weaker, and, presently, died away.

The End