Khuv shook his head and wondered what was ailing the strange little scientist. Wondered what had got into him…
The next morning, early, Khuv jerked awake to the clamour of alarms. In the moment of waking his heart almost stopped — tried to tear itself free and leap up into his throat — until he realized that these were only the general alert alarms, not Luchov's damned failsafe. Thank God — whom Khuv didn't really have any faith in, anyway — for that!
A moment later, as he hurriedly dressed, came the hammering on his door. He opened it to let in the unctuous Paul Savinkov; except that apart from the sweat on his fat, shining, frightened face, there was nothing at all slimy about him now. He smelled now not of grease but fear!
'Major!' he gasped. 'Comrade! My God, my God.r
Khuv shook him. 'What is it, man?' he snarled. 'Here, sit down before you fall down.' He shoved Savinkov into a chair.
The fat esper was trembling, wobbling like a jelly. 'I… I'm sorry,' he said. 'It's just… just…'
Khuv slapped him, backhanded him, deliberately slapped him again. 'Now perhaps you'll tell me what's wrong!' he growled.
The white burn of Khuv's slim fingers came up like long blisters on Savinkov's face. His eyes lost their glaze and he shook his head, as if he was the one who had just woken up and not Khuv. Then — Khuv thought the man was about to burst into tears. If he did, Khuv knew he would hit him right in the teeth! 'Well?' he rasped.
'It's Roborov and Rublev,' Savinkov gasped. 'Dead, both of them!'
'What?' Khuv knew he must be imagining this; it had to be some crazy dream. 'Dead? How, for the love of — ? An accident?' He finished dressing, slipped into his shoes.
'Accident?' Savinkov grinned like an idiot, but his features quickly melted into a sob. 'Oh, no — no, it wasn't an accident. When it happened, their thoughts woke me up. Their thoughts were — awful!'
Thoughts?' Khuv's mind, still not fully awake, sought for an explanation. Of course: Savinkov was a telepath. 'What about their thoughts?' — v
'Something… something was attacking them. In Roborov's room. I think they'd been playing cards, gambling, and that Roborov was a heavy loser. He'd been to the toilet. When he came out… Rublev was nearly dead! Something had him by the throat! Roborov tried to pull it off, and… it turned on him! Oh, God — 1 felt him die! Huh… huh… he…'
'Go on, man!' Khuv gasped.
'He grabbed the thing and turned it around, and he saw it. He was thinking: "I don't believe this! Oh, mother, help me! Sweet God, you know I've always loved you! Don't let this happen!"'
'Those were his thoughts?'
'Yes,' Savinkov sobbed. 'The rest of it was just background stuff, but it was Roborov's thoughts that really woke me up. And as he died — I saw it too.r
'What did you see?' Khuv took Savinkov's face between the flats of his palms.
'God, I don't know! It wasn't human — or maybe it was? It was a nightmare. It was… its shape was all wrong! It was like… like that thing in the glass tank!'
Khuv's blood ran cold. He gulped air into his lungs, released Savinkov's face. He grabbed his lapels and dragged him to his feet. 'Take me there,' he snapped. 'Roborov's room? I know it. Were you there? No? Then who is there? You don't know? Fool! Well, we're going there right now!'
On their way, the alarms stopped clamouring. 'Well, let's be thankful for that, anyway,' Khuv grunted. He jostled Savinkov ahead of him. 'At least I can hear myself think! Now, are you sure you can't remember who you told? I mean, did you simply forget all the procedures and come running straight to me? God, but if this is a wild-goose chase I'll — !'
But it wasn't.
Outside the door of Roborov's room a sleepy, nervous soldier stood on guard. He saluted sloppily as Khuv and Savinkov came into view. They rushed by him. Inside were two more espers, and a KGB man named Gustav Litve. All were whey-faced, shaken to their roots. Crumpled on the floor, there lay the reason. Or reasons.
Nikolai Rublev could be Savinkov's twin! thought Khuv, grimacing at what he saw. They were, or had been, much of a kind. But now there were differences, the main one being that Savinkov was still alive. And he was also intact.
Whatever it was that had killed Rublev, it had taken half his face from him. The fleshy part of the left side of his face was missing, flensed from the bone, from his ear to his nose and down to his chin. But it wasn't the work of a scalpel or knife. The flesh had been ripped off. In addition his throat was torn — torn, as by an animal — with the main arteries severed and exposed. Khuv thought: where's all the blood?
Perhaps he'd said something out loud, for his underling Litve said: 'Sir?'
'Eh?' Khuv looked up. 'Oh, nothing. Fetch Vasily Agursky, will you, Gustav? Bring him here. I want to know what kind of an animal could do this, and he might be able to tell me.'
Litve gratefully made for the door, called back: 'The other's not much better, sir.'
'Other?' Khuv's mind still wasn't on business.
'Roborov.'
Khuv realized he'd been wandering. To make up for it he snapped, 'He was your colleague, wasn't he?'
'Was, sir, yes,' Litve answered. He went out.
Behind an overturned table, amidst a litter of bloodied paper money and cards, lay 'the other', Andrei Roborov. The two espers were standing looking down on him. Khuv shoved them aside, took a look for himself. Roborov's face was a mask of sheer horror. His dead eyes bulged; his jaws gaped in a frozen rictus of terror; his tongue projected, blue and glistening. Mainly cadaverous in life, he was totally grotesque in death. His thin head from the ears up looked like it had been trapped in a toothed vise and crushed. The skull had caved in, and blood and brain fluid seeped from the cracks and the deep punctures of… teeth marks?
'Good Lord!' said Khuv; to which one of the espers added:
'Something bit his head like it was a plum! Major, look at his arms.'
Khuv looked. Both arms were broken at the elbows, bent back on themselves until the bones had parted at the sockets. Whatever it was, it had found a simple and effective way of stopping Roborov from fighting back.
Khuv shook his head, felt his gorge rising. He could almost feel the pulse of the Projekt quickening as morning came and the place started to wake up. There was a faint throbbing underfoot, like the heart of a great beast. And within the beast, a lesser beast: the one that had done this. Or perhaps, a greater beast? What sort of beast? Not human, surely. But if not human…
There was a telephone out in the corridor. Khuv ran to it and called the Duty Officer at Failsafe Concen. He didn't let the man speak but rasped: 'Have you been sleeping? Have you been asleep on duty?'
'Who is this?' came a wide-awake, alert voice from the other end. Khuv recognized the voice: a senior scientist on Luchov's team. A very responsible person.
'This is Major Khuv,' he lowered his voice. 'It seems we may have an intruder. Certainly we have a murderer in the place.'
'An intruder?' the voice on the other end hardened. 'Where are you, Major?'
'I'm in the corridor close to KGB quarters. Why?'
'Do you mean an intruder from outside, or from the Gate?'
'Well, obviously that's why I'm on the phone!' Khuv snapped. 'To find out!'
Now the other came back just as venomously: 'In which case it should also be obvious that your intruder is from outside! If it was anything else — by now you'd be burning, Khuv!'
'I-'
'Listen, I've got the screens right here in front of me. Everything is normal down there, except they're all a bit nervous because of those bloody alarms. Nothing, repeat nothing, has come through that Gate!'
Khuv slammed the phone down. He stood glaring at it. Something was loose in here. Maybe it had been let loose in here. By whom? British E-Branch?
He ran back into Roborov's room, told the two espers: 'Out, leave all this. If you come up with something let me know. But until then leave this to my investigators.'