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8

"Captain Witter," the voice of the Base comm operator said, "the three Galestral people have just arrived. They asked Dr. Bates to show them the bodies, and they're with him now. Mr. Hansen will come out to Station Three with them."

"Thanks," Crowell said. "I'll be waiting."

He switched off his wrist transmitter and glanced down the slope at Station Three. The smashed entry door was visible at this angle; and though he was upwind of the Station now, the stench of death still seemed to be in his nostrils. A shadow drifted over the rocks, and he looked up at his car moving slowly fifty feet above. It was a flat platform at present, its canopy collapsed. Ilken was at the gun, and Bill Tabor, one of the Base's car operators, at the controls. Their attention was on the forest at the top of the slope. Two other armed cars hung in the sky a quarter-mile up, scopes scanning the area. Crowell's hand brushed the gun holster on his hip, obeying a half-conscious need to make sure the weapon was there, though by itself it shouldn't be much protection if whatever had ravaged Station Three during the night chose to return.

Fifteen minutes later, the Galestral car settled to the ground farther up the slope. Hansen climbed out first, followed by the three members of the survey team. "I've told them the circumstances about Hays," Hansen said as they approached.

Crowell nodded, looking at the Galestrals. Their Suesvant rifles were slung across their backs; bandoliers crossed their chests. They'd been informed earlier that Frank Farquhar had disappeared and evidently hadn't been in the Station when it was attacked. "We'll show you what it's like in there," Crowell said. "Then we can compare conclusions."

* * *

The three went matter-of-factly about their examination of the interior shambles of Station Three, faces showing sober alertness but almost nothing in the way of emotion. Crowell and Hansen, who had gone over the Station in detail before, looked on. Things had been left as they'd been found, except that the bodies of the four technicians who'd staffed the Station had been removed. Patches of stickily dried blood covered sections of the floor; insect-like creatures crawled and flew about the patches. The smells of violent death hung in the air.

Apparently, only one killer had come in. Two well-defined footprints showed on the smeared floor of the main room. They weren't unlike the impressions a naked human foot might have left, though larger and proportionately broader. Both were of the same foot—a foot sixteen inches long from the end of the heel to the most advanced of the four thick toe marks, six and a half inches across at the widest point. The kind of foot required to support the giant frame which had raised and swung a great rock, over three hundred pounds at an estimate, to drive the entry door back into the Station. The rock still lay across the door's shattered sections.

Smeared dark patterns of other footprints, very much smaller ones, were visible near the entrance, crossing through the short hall into the main area. They appeared to be those of scavenging animals which had come into the Station later at night, after the killer had left. Furnishings and equipment in the main room were knocked about and smashed. Two heavy-charge shock guns hung untouched on the wall near the entrance.

Ned Brock picked up a packed knapsack from behind an overturned table and placed it on a chair.

"Farquhar's," he commented. He added after a moment, "So he just picked up his Suesvant and walked out . . ."

In the adjoining instrument room, the picture was much the same. One of the two station chronometers had been shattered. Crowell pointed it out, said, "It's indicating sixteen hours eight minutes Base Time. Which fixes the time of the attack at approximately three hours after nightfall. They were still at work here." He nodded at a handgun on the floor. "That's been identified as Dan Gerson's. Gerson was the man who was dictating a report into the recorder in this room at the moment of the attack."

Grant Gage asked, "Has the gun been fired?"

"Yes," Crowell said. "We found it with its trigger locked down and its charge expended. There's still a measurable radiation residue in the room. His body was lying a few yards away from it."

"The others were killed in the main room?"

"Two of them were. Ray Cross and Edwin Raines." Crowell nodded at a shattered doorframe across the room. "The fourth, Wilma Howard, died in the sleeping section beyond that door."

Grant said, "Could we hear the recording of the attack?"

The recorder into which Gerson was dictating hadn't been damaged in the violent action in the room and was still running when Crowell, Ilken and Herrick came into the Station in the morning. As a result, they had an audible record of the attack and of the night hours that followed.

The significant section wasn't long. Biologist Gerson's voice was interrupted by the explosively abrupt shattering of the entrance door. He exclaimed something, the words drowned out by snarling roars, human yells, thudding noises. The roars swelled up, ended suddenly with the rest of the racket. Then, after some seconds, came a splintering crash which marked the destruction of the sleeping section door. The beast's snarls rose again, subsided. The last of its victims had died. Vague sounds continued to come from the machine—an intermittent deep rumbling, a wet slapping. Occasionally a piece of equipment crashed. The noises produced unpleasantly vivid impressions of the intruder prowling about, making a deliberate search for hidden survivors, pausing from time to time to tear at one of the bodies again. At last the Station grew quiet. It had gone.

Crowell shut off the recorder, said, "All four died within less than two minutes. I had the tapes scanned for the rest of the night. There's nothing to indicate that the creature came back to the Station. It broke up the two aircars with rocks, as you saw, and then apparently went away."

He added, "Unless there's something else you want to check here, shall we go outside and try to determine what this means, and what should be done about it?"

* * *

Everything indicated that the attacker was a creature of the type described by Alex Hays. In fact, it could very well have been the one he'd reported seeing and which probably had killed him not many miles from this point. It might have been watching Station Three from concealment for some time. It had known enough, at any rate, to select the entry door as its point of assault.

And it had—must have—some degree of immunity to energy weapons. Crowell said, "I've heard that a number of Galestral's superbeasts can absorb heavy charges without being stopped."

The three nodded. Grant said, "There are species which generate energy blasts for attack or defense. Others developed a corresponding tolerance for them. But nothing's been found on Kulkoor to explain why this biped should have the ability."

"No," Crowell said. "Of course, we may be finding the explanation before we're done. In any case, the biped does seem to have it. Going by the Galestral animals, could a creature like that stand up against guncar fire?"

Grant shook his head. "Not for a significant length of time—if you could get it to face a guncar."

"That might be a problem," Crowell conceded.

Ned Brock said, "A point that puzzles me is that there's a standard force screen control panel in the Station's entrance hall. The rock couldn't have damaged the door if the Station screen had been on. Why should it have been switched off—particularly when someone had been killed in the area two days before?"

And that was, as a matter of fact, a rather delicate point. Crowell said, "We have no explanation. The outlying stations have instructions to maintain protective screening except when personnel enters or leaves. The rule seems to have been violated here last night."

Grant said after a moment, "The screen can be opened from outside the Station?"

"Yes," Crowell said. "That's a necessary provision. But you have to know the coded key for an individual screen to do it."

Hansen added, "That's only one of several unexplained details. What do you make of Farquhar's interest in the biped and the fact that he wasn't in the Station when the thing showed up?"

"I could make a guess about that," Grant said. "He may already have been aware there was such a life form around. His immediate response to the information he got from your Base suggests it. And he may have attached some special significance to that life form."

Hansen said dryly, "Meaning he considered it a possible clue to the Kulkoor Mystery?"

"Or the Kulkoor Problem, as the Galestral Company calls it. Yes, he may have. Farquhar wouldn't have asked permission to make Station Three his temporary quarters for any minor reason. I'll carry that farther. The Station's area scanners are turned off. But Farquhar may have been using them before he left. He might have caught a glimpse of the biped prowling about, and gone out after it without telling the Station staff what he'd seen or what he intended. It would be in keeping with the way he preferred to operate—strictly by himself."

Grant added, "We can assume the biped ambushed and killed him before it attacked the Station."

 

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