Slimer

You don’t have to. The pilot will fly it.’

‘The man down below. That was the pilot, Linda. And I killed him.’

Sixteen

Linda refused to believe it. ‘No! That wasn’t the pilot! You shot the creature!’

‘I wish I had,’ said Paul bitterly. ‘But think back — the guy was carrying a flashlight. The thing wouldn’t do that. And that’s why the airlock was open. He’d just come in from outside.’ He shook his head. ‘No. That was a real person I shot down there. I’ve just committed a murder…’ ‘But you didn’t know… and we can’t be sure yet that was the pilot. You could be wrong.’ Please say you’re wrong, she pleaded silently. To be this close to rescue and then have their hopes dashed was ridiculous. It couldn’t happen. It was too cruel.

Paul didn’t answer. He climbed into the machine and began to investigate its interior. She stood there helplessly, feeling the cold wind pluck at her tattered shirt with icy fingers. She had never experienced despair as overwhelming as this before. For a moment she contemplated going to the edge of the pad and throwing herself over the side.

‘It’s a Sikorsky S-76,’ came Paul’s voice from inside the helicopter. ‘It’s pretty new too. These things haven’t been in service long. It’s supposed to be a good aircraft.’

‘Well, that is fascinating,’ she said with heavy sarcasm. Then she decided to follow him into the machine. At least it would be warmer in there. ‘You know everything Paul,’ she said as she climbed in. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t be able to fly this thing? Maybe you could get-us as far as another oil platform? We could ditch in the sea beside it. Just as long as we could get away from here.’

If he noticed her sarcasm he didn’t give any sign of it. ‘I know the basics of flying a helicopter,’ he replied seriously, ‘but that’s light years away from actually being able to fly one. They’re difficult things to handle, even for experienced pilots. If the weather conditions were perfect I might succeed in lifting her off the pad without smashing the tail rotor to pieces but I wouldn’t bet on it. In this wind — forget it.’

‘So what are we going to do?’ she demanded.

‘I don’t know,’ he said blandly. She didn’t like the sound of his voice. 11 gave the impression that he’d given up at last. She watched worriedly as he climbed forward into one of the pilot’s seats and started examining the control panel as if he was looking over a new car in a showroom. How long would it be, she wondered, before that thing followed them up here?

She moved closer to Paul, peering over his shoulder at the maze ofdifferent instruments in front ofhim. Then she noticed something that sent a pulse of excitement through her. When he’d sat down he’d picked up a pilot’s helmet from the seat and shifted it to the other one. Now there were two helmets resting on the other seat.

She dug her fingers into Paul’s shoulder. ‘Paul, there are two of them! Two pilots! See, the helmets!’

He looked at them for a long time and then turned to her. His eyes were alive again. ‘Christ, you’re right!’ he exclaimed. He started to get up. ‘We’ve got to find the other one, fast. Before it gets him…’

‘Go back in there again?’ she cried. The thought of entering those dark corridors made her stomach muscles contract unpleasantly. ‘No, I can’t. Don’t ask me to.’

‘Okay. You wait here.’ He pushed past her and jumped down onto the pad.

‘Wait!’

He stood there impatiently. ‘Well, are you coming or not?’ She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to go back inside again but neither did she want to be left on her own. She had the strong feeling that if she let Paul out of her sight she’d never see him alive again. Oh, she might see something that looked like Paul but how would she know for certain it was him?

She took a deep breath. ‘Okay,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I’ll come with you.’

‘Hurry then.’ He helped her out of the helicopter then headed for the gangway.

‘We’ll go in the door we first entered on the top level,’ he told her as they climbed down. ‘I imagine they must have split up. One w.cnt to the bottom level and the other one probably worked his way down from the top.’

As they entered the passageway Paul’s theory seemed correct because the airlock was standing open here too. They hurried through the corridors but could find no trace of the pilot.

‘He must already be down on one of the lower levels,’ panted Paul.

Of course he must be, thought Linda sourly, her heart thumping from both exertion and fear. It was too much to expect that they would locate him straight away without any trouble. The platform wasn’t going to let them go that easily.'

But they didn’t find him on the second level either.

They went down to the next one… and immediately came face to face with Shelley.

They almost collided with him as they turned a corner. He was staggering along in a kind of drunk’s shuffle. When he saw them he slumped against the wall and raised a hand. ‘No, don’t shoot! You must listen to me…’

Paul was already aiming the M16. But he held his fire. Linda guessed that after his accidental shooting of the pilot he was going to have difficulty in using the gun again, even against the creature.

‘Don’t waste your time talking,’ he snarled, ‘you’re not Shelley. This is just another of your tricks. You’re Charlie or Phoenix or whatever and I’m going to blow your head off…’

‘It’s no trick!’ cried Shelley. ‘I’m still me… I’m the last one left in here with my own personality intact… but I don’t know how much longer I can hold out. You must listen to what I have to say, it’s vitally important…’

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Paul. But he didn’t shoot.

‘It’s dying,’’ gasped Shelley. ‘You have succeeded where I and all my colleagues, with our scientific resources, failed. You have found a way to destroy the Phoenix…’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Paul suspiciously.

Shelley was barely able to stand upright. His limbs were shaking and his face had the pallor of a man in the last stages of a terminal illness. Linda was reminded of the way Mark had looked before…

‘The heroin,’ said Shelley. ‘Your idea to inject the creature with heroin was a master-stroke…’

‘But it didn’t kill it. It’s still…you’re still alive.’

‘Yes, but it is dying. Slowly but surely. And it can’t evolve a defence against what’s killing it.’

‘Why?’ asked Paul. T' thought it could protect itself against anything.’

‘Yes, but…’ Shelley groaned and slid slowly down the wall until he was sitting on the floor. With an obvious effort he spoke again. ‘By over-dosing it with heroin you have made it totally dependent on the drug. Now it is experiencing fatal withdrawal symptoms. It can’t evolve a defence against this threat because it has become its own enemy. The Phoenix is self-destructing… its own body is destroying it and it can’t do a thing about it…’ He closed his eyes.

There was a period of silence until Paul said dubiously, ‘I’d like to believe that.’

‘It’s true. The only thing that will keep the creature alive is another dose of heroin.’ He opened his eyes. ‘There’s none left, is there?’

‘No,’ said Linda quickly. Shelley might be telling the truth — she was more than half-convinced herself- but if he wasn’t it would be stupid to let the thing know about the rest of the heroin that Paul was carrying. And besides, if this was Shelley he was probably feeling in urgent need of a fix himself. He was, after all, sharing the same body as the thing.

Paul backed her up. ‘We used it all. Your creature would have to travel a long,