With a click the hull slid aside and the three cops filed out. Cautiously, Cussick made his way down. Incredibly chill wind whipped around him; shivering, he peered to see where he was. In the downtown business section, apparently. The grand opaque shapes of office buildings loomed up in the frigid gloom.
“What now?” he inquired irritably.
He was led along a ramp, through an intricate multi-seal lock and down a flight of metal steps. A moment later he was facing a small, rather modest-appearing elderly man in a white medical uniform. The gentleman removed his glasses, blinked, and held out his hand. Rafferty was unassuming, with a worried, preoccupied twitch to his dry features. Above his lips was the faint wisp of a unsuccessful mustache.
“Yes,” he acknowledged, as they shook hands, “I’m Rafferty. But they’re not here, now. You’ll have to wait.”
Cussick said: “Doctor, I don’t know anything about this.” He got out the papers Pearson had given him and handed them over. “I was called into this without warning. You got word about Kaminski?”
Rafferty glanced suspiciously around, then turned and started off down the corridor. As Cussick walked beside him, the biochemist explained: “I sent them off when Pearson notified me that Kaminski had crossed over. It was my idea; I wanted them out of here, in case Kaminski had carried information to the Jones people. Sort of a silly gesture; if Jones knows now, he knew one year ago. But I thought there might be an attack… I’ve watched those mobs climb up on buildings after those protoplasmic affairs. I thought they might come here—using that as a pretext.”
“Where are you taking me?” Cussick asked.
“I’m going to show you the project. I have to, if you’re handling security. My God, you can’t take care of them if you don’t understand what they are.”
Cussick found himself in an elaborate maze of white-glistening, hygienic passages. Doctors wandered here and there, involved in medical work beyond his comprehension. None of them paid any attention to him.
“This is their Refuge,” Rafferty explained, as he stopped before an elongated transparent wall. “I’m having the whole shell cleaned and serviced while they’re out of it. Killing two birds with one stone.” He examined a series of wall-gauges. “We’ll be able to go inside, in a few minutes.”
Cussick was looking into an enormous steamy tank. Clouds of dense moisture billowed, obscuring the macabre landscape. Machinery was at work, lumbering through the humid atmosphere, spraying from thin nozzles. The ground was spongy in appearance. Occasional thick shrubs had sprouted; lumps of vegetable matter completely alien to him. Pools of humid water oozed over the ground. Only greens and blues were visible; the whole tank resembled a marine world, rather than a land world.
“The atmosphere,” Rafferty explained, “is a compound of ammonia, oxygen, freon, and traces of methane. You can see how wet it is. The temperature is high, for us—usually around a hundred degrees Fahrenheit.”
Cussick could make out the sight of buildings half-lost in the dense clouds of water vapor. Small structures, their sides glistening, dripping fat drops of moisture. A damp world, hot, steamy, compact. And utterly unfamiliar.
“They live in there?” he asked slowly.
“The Refuge is their medium. It was constructed to meet their needs, a closed enclave designed to keep them alive. They call it their womb; actually, it’s more an incubator: a transitionary membrane between the womb and the world. But they’re never coming out to this world.”
A technician approached; he and Rafferty conferred. “All right,” Rafferty said. “We can go inside, now.”
A series of wall locks slid aside, and the two men entered the Refuge. Cussick choked, as burning swirls of gas blew up around him. He halted, stumbled, got out his handkerchief and clapped it over his nose.
“You’ll get used to it,” Rafferty said wryly.
“It’s like going into a steam bath. Worse.” Cussick was violently perspiring; he couldn’t breathe and he couldn’t see. As they walked along, Rafferty calmly explained the situation.
“They can’t live outside of this, and we can’t live in here. So this Refuge has to be carefully maintained. It’s possible to destroy them simply by opening a few valves, by letting out their air and letting ours in. Or by smashing the wall. Or by allowing it to cool off. Or by cutting their food supply; obviously, their systems require a totally different diet from our own. Kaminski always did an excellent job of protecting the Refuge; he’s had secret-service men scattered around everywhere. Nobody, not even I, can get into this building without being checked by one of your men.”
As the lumbering machines worked, the air gradually cleared. Now Cussick could see a trifle. And the thick wad of gas jammed into his lungs was beginning to dissolve. “Where did you send them?”
“There’s a very small alternate area. So we can get in here periodically and go over it in detail.” Rafferty indicated the work-teams making their way into the Refuge; the whole upper surface had been removed to make way for major equipment. “Not a duplicate of this: only a portable van. And it gives them a sense of getting out. We’ll pick them up around two o’clock; they like to stay as long as possible. I’ll take you inside their living quarters.”
Cussick had to stoop over to get through the door. “They must be short,” he commented.
“Very short, very small. Luis, the heaviest, weighs less than a hundred pounds.” Rafferty halted. “This is their kitchen. Chairs, table. Dishes.”
Everything was in miniature. A doll’s house: tiny furniture, tiny silverware, a replica of any kitchen but on a reduced scale. From the table, Cussick picked up a wax-impregnated copy of the Wall Street Journal. “They read this?” he demanded, incredulous.
“Certainly.” Rafferty took him down a tiny corridor and into a side room. “This is the quarters of one of them—Frank, his name is. Look around. You’ll see books, recording tapes, clothing like our own. These are people! Human beings, in the cultural, spiritual, moral, and psychological sense. Intellectually, they’re as close to us as—“ He gestured. “Closer to us than some of those howling maniacs out there, with their signs and slogans.”
“My God,” Cussick said, locating a chess set, an electric razor, a pair of suspenders and, tacked up on the wall, a girlie calendar. On the dresser was a book edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses. “They’re mutants, aren’t they? Wartime deviants?”
“No,” Rafferty answered, “they’re my children.”
“Figuratively, you mean.”
“No, I mean literally. I’m their father. Their embryos were removed from my wife’s womb and placed in an artificial membrane. I sired each one of them; my wife and I are the parents of the whole group.”
“But,” Cussick said slowly, “then they’re deliberate mutants.”
“Certainly. For over thirty years I’ve worked with them, developing them according to our program. Each one is a little more perfected. We’ve learned a lot… most of the first ones died.”
“How many are there?”
“There have been forty, in all. But only eight are alive: seven in the Refuge and one infant still in a separate incubator. It’s delicate work, and we have no body of knowledge to draw from.” The drab little doctor spoke calmly; he was merely stating facts. His kind of pride went beyond any boasting.
“Artificially-bred mutants,” Cussick said, prowling around the cramped room. “That’s why they have a common environment.”
“You’ve seen some of the war-time sports?”
“Quite a few.”
“Then you won’t be shocked. It’s a little difficult to take, at first. And in a way, I suppose, it’s almost funny. I’ve seen doctors laugh out loud. They’re small; they’re frail; they have a kind of worried frown. Like me. They toil around the Refuge; they argue and discourse and fight and fret and make love. They have a complete community. The Refuge is their world and in it they form a total organic society.”
“What’s their purpose?” Cussick demanded. Dimly, he was already beginning to grasp the point of the project. “If they can’t live outside, on Earth—“
“That’s it,” Rafferty said, matter-of-factly. “They’re not supposed to live on Earth. They’re intended to live on Venus. We tried to develop a group for survival on Mars, but nothing came of it. Mars and Earth are too different—but Venus is a little more likely. This Refuge, this miniature world, is an exact replica of the conditions our scout ships found on Venus.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
OUTSIDE THE miniature compound building, Doctor Rafferty bent down and showed Cussick one of the sponges indigenous to the Refuge. “This is artificial. But there are legitimate sponges like this on Venus; they were brought here and our teams made models.”
“Why not simply transplant them? Won’t the real thing grow in here?”
“I’ll explain why, a little later.” Getting to his feet he led Cussick to the edge of a small lapping lake. “And these are fakes, too.” From the water Rafferty grabbed a wriggling snake-like creature, with short, stubby legs that thrashed furiously. Swiftly, Rafferty twisted the head; the head came off and the creature stopped moving. “A mechanical contraption—you can see the wiring. But again, an exact model of genuine Venusian fauna.” He restored the head; once more the creature began flopping. Rafferty tossed it back in the water and it swam happily off.