The Beasts in the Void

by Paul W. Fairman

I went to the port and looked out. The huge ice bear had been ravening insanely among the shreds of the water buffalo's body. As I watched both bear and buff began fading.

Before my eyes, they disappeared, evolved back into the stuff of the sparkling fog. I had proved my theory.

Now all the parts dropped into place. The mind stuff has only the ability and the urge to evolve—nothing else—no imagination. It can evolve only if given something to reproduce.

This it can get only from a human mind. It is able to see an image pictured in the human memory and reproduce it in a state of absolute reality.

Witness: Jane saw a tiger in the companionway. Clear in her memory was the image of the tiger she had shot at in India. The mind-stuff saw it and reproduced it in reality. The water buffalo came from my own mind. I killed one exactly like it a year ago. The ice bear was out of Murdo's memory as was the black leopard and the snake.

Witness: The three animals created inside the ship did not appear until the mind stuff from outside penetrated the hull and entered the ship. They were of normal size. But the animals created outside the ship were far out of proportion, the ice bear especially. Why? Because, I believe, the mind stuff is denser in the void. There it has more strength.

My defense against the mind stuff was formulated almost accidentally. I remembered the sequence of Jane's tiger. She saw it, entered my cabin, realized its significance, and fainted. I looked into the companionway and saw the tiger fading.

So I knocked out Murdo for final proof and got it. As soon as he lapsed into unconsciousness the recreations from his mind turned back into sparkling fog. Obviously, and a heaven-sent phenomenon it is—the mind stuff immediately loses its subject-image when the mind from which it came goes unconscious. The mind-stuff has no memory of its own and cannot hold its recreated image in the evolved form under conditions of unconsciousness. The answer now becomes simple.

I drugged Murdo before he regained consciousness. I drugged the other three by means of whisky and food. They have been unconscious for twelve hours. Nothing has happened. I shall keep them that way.

The mind-stuff is trying to complain to me. Almost petulantly; as a child. I sense it sharply. It does not understand the wrong it has done and feels it has been deprived of its right.