Free Who Goes There by John W. Campbell

my ideas in advance. I forgot the ‘U animal,’ as Caldwell named it, could read minds. I’ve a vague idea of something that might work. It’s too vague to bother with, though. Go ahead with your show, while I try to figure out the logic of the thing. I’ll take this bunk.”
    Van Wall glanced up and nodded. The movie screen would be practically on a line with this bunk, hence making the pictures least distracting here, because least intelligible. “Perhaps you should tell us what you have in mind. As it is, only the unknowns know what you plan. You might be—unknown before you got it into operation.”
    “Won’t take long, if I get it figured out right. But I don’t want any more all-but-the-test-dog-monsters things. We better move Copper into this bunk directly above me. He won’t be watching the screen, either.” McReady nodded toward Copper’s gently snoring bulk. Garry helped them lift and move the doctor.
    McReady leaned back against the bunk and sank into a trance, almost, of concentration, trying to calculate chances, operations, methods. He was scarcely aware as the others distributed themselves silently, and the screen lit up. Vaguely Kinner’s hectic, shouted prayers and his rasping hymn-singing annoyed him till the sound accompaniment started. The lights were turned out, but the large, light-colored areas of the screen reflected enough light for ready visibility. It made men’s eyes sparkle as they moved restlessly. Kinner was still praying, shouting, his voice a raucous accompaniment to the mechanical sound. Dutton stepped up the amplification.
    So long had the voice been going on that only vaguely at first was McReady aware that something seemed missing. Lying as he was, just across the narrow room from the corridor leading to Cosmos House, Kinner’s voice had reached him fairly clearly, despite the sound accompaniment of the pictures. It struck him abruptly that it had stopped.
    “Dutton, cut that sound,” McReady called as he sat up abruptly. The pictures flickered a moment, soundless and strangely futile in the sudden, deep silence. The rising wind on the surface above bubbled melancholy tears of sound down the stove pipes. “Kinner’s stopped,” McReady said softly.
    “For God’s sake start that sound, then; he may have stopped to listen,” Norris snapped.
    McReady rose and went down the corridor. Barclay and Van Wall left their places at the far end of the room to follow him. The flickers bulged and twisted on the back of Barclay’s gray underwear as he crossed the still-functioning beam of the projector. Dutton snapped on the lights, and the pictures vanished.
    Norris stood at the door as McReady had asked. Garry sat down quietly in the bunk nearest the door, forcing Clark to make room for him. Most of the others had stayed exactly where they were. Only Connant walked slowly up and down the room, in steady, unvarying rhythm.
    “If you’re going to do that, Connant,” Clark spat, “we can get along without you altogether, whether you’re human or not. Will you stop that damned rhythm?”
    “Sorry.” The physicist sat down in a bunk and watched his toes thoughtfully. It was almost five minutes, five ages, while the wind made the only sound, before McReady appeared at the door.
    “We,” he announced, “haven’t got enough grief here already. Somebody’s tried to help us out. Kinner has a knife in his throat, which was why he stopped singing, probably. We’ve got monsters, madmen, and murderers. Any more ‘M’s’ you can think of Caldwell? If there are, we’ll probably have ‘em before long.”

XIII
    “Is Blair loose?” someone asked.
    “Blair is not loose. Or he flew in. If there’s any doubt about where our gentle helper came from—this may clear it up.” Van Wall held a foot-long, thin-bladed knife in a cloth. The wooden handle was half-burned, charred with the peculiar pattern of the top of the galley stove.
    Clark stared at it. “I did that this afternoon.