The Thing by Alan Dean Foster

Author:Alan Dean Foster [Foster, Alan Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780553204773
Google: xdJGAAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0553204777
Publisher: Spectra
Published: 1982-06-01T07:00:00+00:00

A large hole in the snow served the camp as a trash dump for nonbiological wastes. It was well off to one side and framed over with a wooden roof to keep anyone from accidentally stumbling into it.

Human by-products were treated differently, out of necessity and experience born of a generation of modern Arctic exploration. They were chemically treated and then stored in drums for burial much farther from camp.

In most hostile-terrain climates simple septic tanks would serve for such material, but not in Antarctica. Not where everything froze solid and steadfastly refused to biodegrade. You had to be careful what you did with your waste or it would hang around and haunt you.

Not much daylight left this far south, Bennings thought as he upended the trash container. It was slung on a handcart mounted on skids instead of wheels. He backed the cart away from the hole and kicked the covering door shut, rubbing his gloved hands as he studied the sky.

Soon winter would take hold of the southern continent and it would really begin to get cold. The men would have to retreat permanently into their warren to wait for the return of the sun.

Palmer and Childs slaved over the least mangled of the helicopters. Garry still held out some hope that one of them could be repaired in time to make a run to McMurdo Sound, where its pilot would trade disarming information for reinforcements, supplies, expert advice, and, at the very least, a new radio.

The old one was a pile of sharp-edged plastic flotsam in the telecom room. Any thoughts of repairing an old-style instrument would have been out of the question. But all the camp's electronic equipment was solid-state. So there was a slim chance of fixing up a rudimentary broadcast unit.

Unfortunately, trying to link dozens of chips and other tiny, rainbow-colored components into something resembling a working piece of communications equipment was a task for someone who combined the talents of a Bell labs instructor and a master of jigsaw puzzles.

Sanders was neither. Besides, his head still hurt. He adjusted the large bandage wrapped around his forehead and tried to make some sense of the carnage. From time to time his vision went blurry on him. Matters weren't helped by the minuscule size of some of the requisite components.

Those which had survived Blair's rampage lay in a neat pile on the desk in front of him, looking like pieces of matinee sugar candy. Each had a number stamped on its frontside. Circuit boards were arranged around the heap in a semicircle. The boards also had numbers printed on them. Empty sockets glared from the boards, needing replacements. All you had to do was match the numbers on the replacement modules with those on the boards.

Sure.

"I'll see what I can do," Sanders was telling Norris. "I told Garry I'd give it a try. But most of these units," and he made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the majority of ruined equipment, "are designed for factory repair.

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