BLAIR: Uh-eh?
CONNANT (straightens up): Get up - and get a lift on. Your damned animal’s escaped.
VAN WALL: Escaped - what!
Chief Pilot Van Walls’s bull voice roared out with a volume that shook the walls. Down the communication tunnels other voices yelled suddenly. The dozen inhabitants of Paradise House tumbled in abruptly, Barclay, stocky and bulbous in long woolen underwear, carrying a fire extinguisher.
BARCLAY (demanding): What the hell's the matter?
CONNANT: Your damned beast got loose. I fell asleep about twenty minutes ago, and when I woke up, the thing was gone. Hey, Doc, the hell you say those things can’t come to life. Blair’s blasted potential life developed a hell of a lot of potential and walked out on us.
COPPER (staring blankly): It wasn’t - Earthly. (he sighs suddenly) I - I guess Earthly laws don’t apply.
Connant swears bitterly, his deep-set black eyes sullen and angry.
CONNANT: Well, it applied for leave of absence and took it. We’ve got to find it and capture it somehow. . . . It’s a wonder the hellish creature didn’t eat me in my sleep.
Blair stared back, his pale eyes suddenly fearstruck.
BLAIR: Maybe it di - er - uh - we’ll have to find it.
CONNANT: You find it. It’s your pet. I’ve had all I want to do with it, sitting there for seven hours with the counter clucking every few seconds, and you birds in here singing night-music. It’s a wonder I got to sleep. I’m going through to the Ad Building.
Commander Garry ducked through the doorway, pulling his belt tight.
GARRY: You won’t have to. Van’s roar sounded like the Boeing taking off down wind. So it wasn’t dead?
CONNANT (snapping): I didn’t carry it off in my arms, I assure you. The last I saw, that split skull was oozing green goo, like a squashed caterpillar. Doc just said our laws don’t work - it’s unearthly. Well, it’s an unearthly monster, with an unearthly disposition, judging by the face, wandering around with a split skull and brains oozing out.
Norris and McReady appeared in the doorway, a doorway filling with other shivering men.
NORRIS (innocently): Has anybody seen it coming over here? About four feet tall - three red eyes - brains oozing - Hey, has anybody checked to make sure this isn’t a cracked idea of humor? If it is, I think we’ll unite in tying Blair’s pet around Connant’s neck like the ancient Mariner’s albatross.-.
CONNANT (shivering): It’s no humor. Lord, I wish it were. I’d rather wear -
He stopped. A wild, weird howl shrieked through the corridors. The men stiffened abruptly, and half turned.
CONNANT (finishing): I think it’s been located.
His dark eyes shifted with a queer unease. He darted back to his bunk in Paradise house, to return almost immediately with a heavy .45 revolver and an ice-ax. He hefted both gently as he started for the corridor toward Dogtown.
CONNANT: It blundered down the wrong corridor - and landed among the huskies. Listen - the dogs have broken their chains -
The half-terrorized howl of the dog pack changed to a wild hunting melee. The voices of the dogs thundered in the narrow corridors, and through them came a low rippling snarl of distilled hate. A shrill of pain, a dozen snarling yelps. Connant broke for the door.
Close behind him, McReady, then Barclay and Commander Garry came. Other men broke for the Ad Building, and weapons – the sledge house. Pomroy, in charge of Big Magnet’s five cows, started down the corridor in the opposite direction – he had a six-foot-handled, long-tined pitchfork in mind.
TUNNEL TO DOGTOWN: Barclay slid to a halt, as McReady’s giant bulk turned abruptly away from the tunnel leading to Dogtown, and vanished off at an angle. Uncertainly, the mechanician wavered a moment, the fire-extinguisher in his hands, hesitating from one side to the other.
Then he was racing after Connant’s broad back. Whatever McReady had in mind, he could be trusted to make it work. Connant stopped at the bend in the corridor. His breath hissed suddenly through his throat.
CONNANT: Great God
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