THE VANDERLARK by Margaret St. Clair

Good evening and welcome to Night's Gallery. Thank you, Rod, and I want to welcome everyone to Midnight Viewing, where once a month we talk all about your follow up to the Twilight Zone, Rod Serling's Night Gallery. They say it's Rod's re LA's Night Going, and it isn't really Rod through Las Night Gallery. It's somebody else's. Oh, we know, we talk about it a lot.

Your curators at Midnight Viewing are the projection booths. Mike White, What can happen to human beings when trust is wiped out by suspicion and culture casts? Chris Stashue small boy incased in the Crystal Ball, and I'm Father Malone, the kind of thing that usually infest nightmares. Join us monthly at Midnight Viewing. The Night Gallery podcast at Weirdingway Media dot Com doesn't remotely belong to me.

I have no proprietary interest in that at all. No, it's junkies. It's a music podcast, baby, covering every musical genre. Well, we got that. The others don't not tell you.

We got momdo Heather's Heather Drain. We got Wolven raisins age, he no junk, we got dark Destinations. Father malone, no, and we got you, we got music, and we got you made it and you getting it weird and way media noise junkies, weird media weird in way media presents present astounding tadhunting of the public door of public done which father belone with father below the vander Lark by Margaret Saint Clair. Are there any more of them? Alice asked mcfeine when he came back from two Hold.

Yes. Alice's mouth opened and a soundless oh. Her hand went to her breast. After a moment, she picked up the comb and began pulling it again through her brittle hair. How many more?

He didn't count them? Hire hard to count quite a lot. The comb caught on a tangle. Alice put it down unsteadily. I wish we never brought them.

I wish we'd never started on this trip. I hate those things. They're uncanny. They give me the creeps. What do you suppose is making them increase like that?

They don't know. Mcfeene's lean, ill humored face was more than usually morose. Listen, Alice, Well, that isn't the worst of it. I found a hole in the mesh of their cage. You're trying to frighten me.

There couldn't be a hole in Beryllia Mesh. There was, though I had to patch it up the best way I could. And Alice, there was an eroded spot in the side of the hole. You mean there was a spot eaten into on the side of our ship. Yes, I played it over with the AutoWorld.

It was near their cage. The comb snapped in Alice's hand. She stared at mcpheine. I told you, I told you it was dangerous. You wouldn't listen to me.

You knew everything. When I said there was a reason why the Biologic Survey wouldn't release any hira to fight the blight on Varrow, you said the Survey was nothing but a bunch of fat cat officeholders who had to make a lot of fool regulations to look like they were earning their salaries. You talked big about how it was your duty to help the poor Boscula ranchers on Varrow fight the blight. You tried to pretend money wasn't the reason why you were smuggling the hira out to them. You knew all the answers, Everything would be all right.

Oh, you were mister know it all. Now we're in deep space with an eroded hall. In deep space, I told you something would happen. I talk. Mcphine slapped her hard across the mouth.

Keep that, Gabby, trappy or shut, he said threateningly. He hung over her menacingly for a moment, and then relenting. After all, he and Alice had been through a lot together. No matter whose fault it is, complaining isn't going to help us. Now we've got to figure a way out of this.

Alice put up one hand and fingered her swelling lips. Yes, I guess we have. Mcphine began to walk up and down the little cabin. The way I figure it is this is the first time anybody's had any higher and deep space. They were all right as long as we were in this system.

It wasn't until we hit deep that they began to increase deeper and we go the faster. The rate of increases higher come from Pluto. And when the biologic survey tried them out on germs of the blight from Barrow and found they controlled it, tests were made on Tara still in the system, I mean an under system, conditions higher increased so slowly that for one to bud Off, was a real rarity. The way I figure it, conditions are different out here in deep Maybe it's because inside the system there's always some gravity, even off the planets. I mean, we don't notice it, but it stands to reason it must be there.

When there's no gravity at all, the highers start to breed, and when they breed they give off a kind of gas or something A tax brilliant. But we've got gravity on the ship. We don't go floating around, Alice said, through her swollen lips. It isn't real gravity, Alice, it's just from the centrifugure. Oh well, if it isn't, what is real gravity?

I don't know exactly. I never was good at theoretical stuff. Some kind of electromagnetic force, I guess, Alice nodded, uncomprehendingly. Could we couldn't we get rid of the higher round Mac? We could think up some way of killing them if we tried.

I guess you're awfully smart, and then we could start back home. I'm so scared, honey, those higher scare me. So mcphine turned on her, fiercely blasted fool. Don't you know how it is with us? Is something that matter with your head had been blacklisted.

There isn't a place in this system I can get a job. There isn't a man in a system I could borrow money from. If this trip veils, I'm sunk, done for finished, get rid of the Hira. Brainless lathering idiot? Do you want to starve?

Alice shrank into herself. But Mac, we can get through to Varrow. With the higher we've got, the big Bossula groups will make us rich. We can have everything we've ever wanted. No, shut up.

He went to a locker and began getting equipment out of it. Alice watched him, running her tongue over her swollen lips. What are you going to do, Mac, she asked? At last, rig up and electro magnet around the Hira. It might help, It's got help.

It didn't work. Whether or not mcfiene's theory was at fault. The apparatus he rigged up around the cage of Hira did no good. He tried chemical solutions, sprays, hard and soft radiations. Nothing helped.

He took to spending most of his time in two Hold, trying desperately, with the help of the Otto weld, to keep the eroded patches on the hull under control. Without telling Alice, he made experiments designed to get rid of at least some of the Hira. These two failed. The silicious, gelatinous bodies of the high Road were extremely hard to destroy. Short of methods which would have endangered the whole ship, there was nothing he could do.

Mcfee's natural moroseness was changing rapidly into an inflammable desperation when quite abruptly, the increase of the highras stopped. At first he was incredulous. He tried over and over to count those in the cage and gave up in disgust. More convincing was the evidence of the hull. More eroded patches were appearing.

For some twenty four hours. He held on to his incredulity. Then he allowed himself to be conquered by relief. He went to Alice with the news and found her as incredulous as he had been. He had to take her into two Hold and show her the holes gleaming intact sides, piece by piece before she would be convinced.

Then she began to giggle in hysterical relief. Poorhold, Hira, poor old things. I guess it was pretty mean about the Mac. I'm sorry, poor old things. She looked toward the crowded Hira cage, and then rather hastily away again.

But everything's going to be all right now, isn't it, Mac. Now they've stopped increasing, Everything's going to be all right. You bet it is, mcpheene said, expansively. The more to worry about. Say listen, Alice.

Yes, she was still looking obliquely toward the Hira cage. What do you say we go back to the cabin and have a little drink celebrate. That's a swell idea. I always say you were spark Mac. Let's go celebrate.

She glanced once more toward the Hira, and then followed him out of the hold. Back in the cabin, mcfeene broke out a bottle of Soma concentrate. He and Alice drank it slowly, with much inconclusive speculation as to the reason why the Hira had ceased to breed. When the soma was gone, mcfeine brought out a bottle of phlomus. Usually, he and Alice began to quarrel bitterly when they reached the second bottle in their drinking bouts, but this time, they were both feeling too good for it to happen.

They went on from bottle to bottle, drink after drink, in a thickening haze of moist, maudlin good fellowship. Finally they both passed out. Meantime, the ship slid on and on into the deep. Mcfeene awoke some ten hours later with his sinus's thundering liquor always did that to him. He had a dim, uncomfortable feeling that at some point in their drinking he had insisted on telling Alice what he had done with the fifteen hundred ius she thought had been stolen.

Even More faintly, he seemed to remember her responding with a full and equally indiscreet account of how she had spent the three months he had been on Uranus. Oh well, it didn't really matter, neither he nor Alice was the kind of drinker who remembers details. He sat on the edge of his bunk for a moment, gathering strength, and then groped his way over to the aid chest. He got out two so briar pills and swallowed them. As his head began to clear, he looked around for Alice.

She was lying on her back in her bunk, snoring heavily, with a long strand of her bleached blonde hair lying across her face. She'd be out for a while yet, he guessed. Meanwhile, he'd better go see how the cage of Hira was. It was always possible that they'd begun to breed again, Or was he feeling too queasy to look at them now? Any tendency toward queasiness was bound to be increased by looking at Hira.

No, he'd better not put it off. Still walking rather unsteadily, he left the cabin and went into twos. His first impression was that the Hira cage had grown. Surely it was much larger than it had been. Then he realized that the size of the cage was unchanged.

It seemed larger because it was emptier. There were fewer Hira in it than there had been before. There were no visible holes in the mesh. It was impossible. Mcpheene, cold sober now, knelt down beside the cage and inspected the mesh centimeter by centimeter.

Everywhere it was whole and unbroken. He didn't think a flea could have gotten through it. He turned on the floodlights and gave the hold an equally thorough scrutiny. No, no Hira, not a Hira anywhere, leaving aside the question of how they had got through the mesh. Where had they gone too?

Number two hold, like the others, was hermetically sealed, and he knew no hira had gone past him when he had broken the seal on entering. The whole thing was impossible. He must be imagining it, after all, he hadn't counted them. Mcphene leaned against a bulkhead and pressed his fingers to his head. The pain in his frontal signus was jumping again.

Maybe he was still a little bit buzzed. He didn't think he was, but it was possible. That would account for a lot. He looked at the cage once more. Wait, now he had it.

The reason it looked so much emptier was that the hira u. How he loathed them. He'd never let Alice see how much we're all jammed together at one end, heaped on one another like a pile of oozing, pupilless eyes. Naturally, the cage looked bigger when the highra were piled up like that. Mcfheen almost laughed in his relief.

He sealed the hole up carefully and went back to the cabin, his footfalls ringing unevenly. Alice was sitting up in her bunk. She had washed her face and pushed her hair out of her eyes. She nodded shortly at him when he came in. After a while, she got up and began opening some soup.

They both felt better when they had eaten. Alice revived sufficiently to comb her hair and spray some makeup on. The pain began to die away in mcfeen's head. He'd been a fool to get so excited over nothing. All the same, he was going into the hold and have another look at the hira.

He pushed back his chair. Where are you going, mac Alice asked. She was gathering up the remains of the meal and putting them in the disposure to hold. They are increasing again, are they? No?

Nothing like that? This time? There was no possible doubt. The heap of hira was less than half the size it had been in the time since he had left the hold. Certainly not more than three quarters of an hour.

It had gone way way down. He could count the hira without any difficulty. Now they were either sixteen or seventeen. Mcfeen's heart began pounding wildly. His chest felt so constricted he could hardly breathe.

For a moment, he tried to fight his panic to reason with himself. Then he turned and ran for Alice. She came rather unwillingly, understanding from his horse incoherence only that the hira were not increasing anymore. When she saw the almost empty cage, she was not alarmed. Why, honey, there must be a hole there.

You haven't found a hole or some She fell silent suddenly, Mac, she said, in quite a different voice. Mcphane had been trying to count the hira. It seemed to him that there was one less in the cage than there had been when he went to the cabin. Just now, for Alice, Mac, where's that shadow coming from? The fear in her voice infected mcphine with instant irritability.

What shadow? What are you talking about? Haven't we got trouble enough? Be quiet? What are you starting in on shadows?

For mac? Alice had to swallow and lick her lips before she could go on. Look at it. There in the corner of the cage. She pointed with one hand, mcphine's eyes followed the gesture For an unbeatable moment.

He looked squarely at the thing in the corner of the cage. His heart gave a horrible alert, like a horse trying to unseat the rider on its back. Nothing nothing, nothing, just a shadow the bulkheads casting. Was the shadow here when you were in the hole before? I don't know, yes, of course it was, It must have been.

Alice stood quite motionless for an instant. Her elbows were pressed to her sides, her hands against her chest in the feminine posture of resistance and defense. Turn the floodlights on, Mac. The lights snapped on. The hold was illuminated from old sides.

It was an illumination as shadowless as that of an operating theater, as bright as the noon of a terrestrial day. The shadow in the corner of the higher cage was quite unaffected by it. Alice drew a long, quavering sigh. She put both her hands on mcphane's forearm. He could feel her trembling.

Mac, honey, you know such a lot. You're so smart. Won't you tell me where the shadow's coming from? Won't you please tell me what's making it mcpheine looked at her. His eyes were wild.

I don't know. I tell you, I don't know. Stop asking me questions, Stop badgering me. He pulled against her for a moment, then he tore loose and ranney. Alice said, when they were back in the cabin once more, with the hold sealed behind them, I think I know what that thing in the cage is, she spoke with surprising calmness, though she was trembling.

A good deal she had, all things considered, come out of the hold in better condition than mcphine had. There's nothing in the cage, mcphine answered, shuddering. He uncapped a floamist bottle and drank from it. Drops of the liquor were running down his chin. Nothing in the cage.

Oh yes, Mac, I think it's a vander lark. He put the bottle down. The drink had helped him. Vander lark. What's that supposed to be?

I guess there's only one of it, Alice corrected herself. She rubbed her lips for a moment with a handkerchief. I wish my mouth wouldn't shake, because it hard to talk. The vander Lark's a thing that lives in deep space. It's made out of black.

One of my boyfriends who was a pilot and deep told me about it once when he'd been drinking. He was awfully scared of it. I guess it's everywhere, really, Bill said, it was everywhere, always, in all spaces and all times. I don't understand that very well, do you, mac mcphene said. He turned the floamist bottle around, studying it with Haggard concentration.

Anyway, deep is where the vander Lark is more. Most of the time. It doesn't bother anybody. But if you call it, it comes. Call it.

What do you mean? We never call that thing. We didn't mean to call it. But maybe or maybe it was the higher called it. I mean when we hit deep space, they began to increase.

Maybe when they increase, they made a quiver in space that attracted it. They're not alive and the way other things are are, they're different or maybe a part of them who's always been where the Vanderlark is. Mcfeene rubbed his hands over his face. He got another bottle of Flomus from the locker, uncapped it, and then put it aside without tasting it. What are we going to do else?

He asked humbly. Alice stood up, smoothing the folds of her wrinkled dress. In this moment she had an odd dignity. I'm awfully scared, mac, she said, as if in explanation. The best thing I can think of is to put the higher cage in the life raft and then jet the raft off away from the ship.

Maybe the Vanderlark will follow it when the Hier are gone, maybe the shadow will leave us alone. There were only three Hier left in the cage. The shadow had filled all except the cage's extreme end. Mcfeen looked at it and then averted his gaze. His face was so white that the brownness of his skin looked like grease paint laid on a mask.

Alice was standing behind him. He laid hold of the cage and tried to lift it up. There was an instant's resistance. Then the shadow welled up enormously in a horrible puffing out of black. Mcphine was left holding the top edge of the cage.

All the rest was gone. He stood looking stupidly at the metal for a moment, and then dropped it on the deck. He began to back away. He was screaming on a single high note. He hadn't stopped screaming when, without any perceptible motion, the blackness, the limitless blackness, closed over him.

Alice turned and ran. The life raft was aft of two hold. She couldn't have gone through to the raft even if she had thought of it. She ran from the hold to the cabin. From the cabin into the control room.

The vander Lark found her there, pressed flat against the metal of the prow, mumbling no, no, no, over and over, and trying to push her way out through the ship with her hands. Quietly and easily, it extended itself and made her a part of it. Then there was silence. After a while, the Vanderlark flowed over the whole ship, and then there was nothing there at all but vander Lark. This episode of Astounding Tales of the Public Domain featured performances by Drew Bedo, Dakota Sky, and Father Malone.

Produced by Father Malone, music by HP