That was what it was ... a symbol and a dream.
And something, too, now that he was here, now that he could admit it, that had lain in the back of his mind all the way from Earth.
West shucked his belt around so that the pistol hung handy to his fist.
If men were here ... or worse, if that message hadn't been a phony, he might need the pistol. Although it was unlikely that the sort of thing that he then would face would be vulnerable to a pistol.
Shivering, he remembered that terse, secret report reposing in the confidential archives back on Earth ... the transcription of the tense, rasping voice that had come over the radio from Pluto, a voice that told of dreadful things, of dying men and something that was loose. A voice that had screamed a warning, then had gurgled and died out.
It was after that that the ban had been put on the planet and the space patrol sent out to quarantine the place.
Mystery from the first, he thought ... beginning and the end. First because the commission was seeking a hormone to effect controlled mutations in the human race. And the race would resent such a thing, of course, so it had to be a mystery.
The human race, West thought bitterly, resents anything that deviates from the norm. It used to stone the leper from the towns and it smothered its madmen in deep featherbeds and it stares at a crippled thing and its pity is a burning insult. And its fear ... oh, yes, its fear!
Slowly, carefully, West made his way across the landing strip. The surface was smooth, so smooth that his space boots had little grip upon it.
On the rocky height above the field stood the laboratory, but West turned back and stared out into space, as if he might be taking final leave of someone that he knew.