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“It’s starting to crack. From the collar-bone V to the navel, a microscopic fissure! He’ll be out of his chrysalis soon!”
McGuire’s jowls trembled. “And then what?”
Hartley’s words were bitter sharp. “We’ll have a superman. Question: what does a superman look like? Answer: nobody knows.”
Another crust of flakes crackled open.
McGuire shivered. “Will you try to talk to him?”
“Certainly.”
“Since when do—butterflies—speak?”
“Oh, Good God, McGuire!”
With the two others securely imprisoned upstairs, Rockwell locked himself into Smith’s room and bedded down on a cot, prepared to wait through the long wet night, watching, listening, thinking.
Watching the tiny flakes flicking off the crumbling skin of chrysalis as the Unknown within struggled quietly outward.
Just a few more hours to wait. The rain slid over the house, pattering. What would Smith look like? A change in the earcups perhaps for greater hearing; extra eyes, maybe; a change in the skull structure, the facial setup, the bones of the body, the placement of organs, the texture of skin, a million and one changes.
Rockwell grew tired and yet was afraid to sleep. Eyelids heavy, heavy. What if he was wrong? What if his theory was entirely disjointed? What if Smith was only so much moving jelly inside? What if Smith was mad, insane—so different that he’d be a world menace? No. No. Rockwell shook his head groggily. Smith was perfect. Perfect. There’d be no room for evil thought in Smith. Perfect.
The sanitarium was death quiet. The only noise was the faint crackle of chrysalis flakes skimming to the hard floor …
Rockwell slept. Sinking into the darkness that blotted out the room as dreams moved in upon him. Dreams in which Smith arose, walked in stiff, parched gesticulations and Hartley, screaming, wielded an ax, shining, again and again into the green armor of the creature and hacked it into liquid horror. Dreams in which McGuire ran babbling through a rain of blood. Dreams in which—
Hot sunlight. Hot sunlight all over the room. It was morning. Rockwell rubbed his eyes, vaguely troubled by the fact that someone had raised the blinds. Someone had—he leaped! Sunlight! There was no way for the blinds to be up. They’d been down for we
eks! He cried out.
The door was open. The sanitarium was silent. Hardly daring to turn his head, Rockwell glanced at the table. Smith should have been lying there.
He wasn’t.
There was nothing but sunlight on the table. That—and a few remnants of shattered chrysalis. Remnants.
Brittle shards, a discarded profile cleft in two pieces, a shell segment that had been a thigh, a trace of arm, a splint of chest—these were the fractured remains of Smith!
Smith was gone. Rockwell staggered to the table, crushed. Scrabbling like a child among the rattling papyrus of skin. Then he swung about, as if drunk, and swayed out of the room and pounded up the stairs, shouting:
“Hartley! What did you do with him? Hartley! Did you think you could kill him, dispose of his body, and leave a few bits of shell behind to throw me off trail?”
The door to the room where McGuire and Hartley had slept was locked. Fumbling, Rockwell unlocked it. Both McGuire and Hartley were there.
“You’re here,” said Rockwell, dazed. “You weren’t downstairs, then. Or did you unlock the door, come down, break in, kill Smith and—no, no.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Smith’s gone! McGuire, did Hartley move out of this room?”
“Not all night.”
“Then—there’s only one explanation—Smith emerged from his chrysalis and escaped during the night! I’ll never see him, I’ll never get to see him, damn it! What a fool I was to sleep!”
“That settles it!” declared Hartley. “The man’s dangerous or he would have stayed and let us see him! God only knows what he is.”
“We’ve got to search, then. He can’t be far off. We’ve got to search then! Quick now, Hartley. McGuire!”
