Free The Thing by Alan Dean Foster Page A

leaned over to switch off the VCR. He'd already seen this particular tape.
    Time to go on to something new. He ran his eyes down the tape box, selected another tape and inserted it into the player, thumbing the "play" control.
    This time the object of the game was to roll oversized dice on a crap table to win money and a chance at merchandise. The lissome dark lady currently gambling happily with the network's money was built like a hot night in August. Childs leaned back against the headboard and wondered why all the fine fillies were already married.
    Palmer was stretched out on the cot opposite the mechanic, reading. The sound from the television didn't bother him. Not much could bother him when he was smoking. He alternated cultivating duties with Childs at their semisecret little "farm." Last season's harvest had been particularly fine. Pungent smoke drifted through the room.
    Childs beckoned to him and Palmer handed the joint across. The big mechanic took a couple of hits and mentally urged the game show director to go to an overhead shot, while Palmer returned to the cerebral stimulation afforded by the collected works of that renowned philosopher, Gilbert Shelton.
    Macready sat alone in the pub, staring at the television monitor there. He was sipping the drink he'd mixed for himself.
    The pub was actually a large metal storage crate. One side had been cut away and the interior decorated with shelves and bottle holders. The elegant wine list, a product of Norris's talented calligraphy, listed twelve different kinds of beer from Foster's Lager (Australian) to Dos Equis (Mexican) to the rare Hinano, brewed in Tahiti. There were also bottles containing darker and more potent liquids.
    A Hamms beer sign hung at a crooked angle from the back wall of the pub, its sky-blue waters running downhill from a never-ending mechanical lake. Macready wiped his lips and took another slug of his drink.
    He was forcing himself to run through every foot of videotape he and Copper had salvaged from the Norwegian camp. Thus far their contents had been unalterably boring. There were endless scenes of men at work, horseplay, the taking of ice samples, the recording of information. In other words, scenes of all the usual day-to-day activities you'd expect to see at such a station.
    Worse, the cameraman was no Abel Gance, Macready told himself ruefully. The picture tended to be out of focus much of the time, and bobbed and weaved so that his eyes throbbed and his head ached as he forced himself to watch.
    It was the very sameness of those tapes that troubled him and kept him at it. There was nothing on any of them to hint that any of the men depicted at work or play stood on the verge of a mental breakdown. They all appeared perfectly normal, and the fact that he couldn't understand a word they were saying did nothing to alter that evaluation.
    Of course, a violent breakdown could occur suddenly and without any outward manifestation of internal trouble on the part of the disturbed. Copper had reiterated that point when the pilot had queried him about it.
    Also previously discussed was the unlikelihood of a candidate for treatment displaying his symptoms for the benefit of the probing camera. But Macready continued to stare blearily at the tapes in the faint hope of discovering something revealing, some clue to what might have disrupted the placid daily routine of the Norwegian camp. It was hard going. Already he was on his third drink.
    Blair hovered over the microscope. He put a new slide under the clips, examined it carefully, and frowned. Pulling away, he rubbed his eyes, then pressed the right one to the eyepiece for a second look.
    "Doc. Come here a second."
    Copper walked over and took the biologist's place at the instrument as Blair stepped aside. The doctor gazed at the slide for a long time, then stood back and shrugged.
    "I don't understand. What's that supposed to be?" he said, gesturing at the microscope and its contents.
    By way of