Phantoms

die before we find the solution, the new team will know every step we took. They won’t have to start from scratch, and they might even have a detailed record of the fatal mistake that got us killed.”
     
    The second stop was the arts and crafts gallery into which Frank Autry had led the three other men last night. Again, he led the way through the showroom, into the rear office, and up the stairs to the second-floor apartment.
    It seemed to Frank that there was almost something comic about the scene: all these spacemen lumbering up the narrow stairs, their faces theatrically grim behind plexiglass faceplates, the sound of their breathing amplified by the closed spaces of their helmets and projected out of the speakers on their chests at an exaggerated volume, and ominous sound. It was like one of those 1950s science fiction movies— Attack of the Alien Astronauts or something equally corny—and Frank couldn’t help smiling.
    But his vague smile vanished when he entered the apartment kitchen and saw the dead man again. The corpse was where it had been last night, lying at the foot of the refrigerator, wearing only blue pajama bottoms. Still swollen, bruised, staring wide-eyed at nothing.
    Frank moved out of the way of Copperfield’s people and joined Bryce beside the counter where the toaster oven stood.
    As Copperfield again requested silence from the uninitiated, the scientists stepped carefully around the sandwich fixings that were scattered across the floor. They crowded around the corpse.
    In a few minutes they were finished with a preliminary examination of the body.
    Copperfield turned to Bryce and said, “We’re going to take this one for an autopsy.”
    “You still think it looks as if we’re dealing with just a simple incident of CBW?” Bryce asked, as he had asked before.
    “It’s entirely possible, yes,” the general said.
    “But the bruising and swelling,” Tal said.
    “Could be allergic reactions to a nerve gas,” Houk said.
    “If you’ll slide up the leg of the pajamas,” Jenny said, “I believe you’ll find that the reaction extends even to unexposed skin.”
    “Yes, it does,” Copperfield said. “We’ve already looked.”
    “But how could the skin react even where no nerve gas came into contact with it?”
    “Such gases usually have a high penetration factor,” Houk said. “They’ll pass right through most clothes. In fact, about the only thing that’ll stop many of them is vinyl or rubber garments.”
    Just what you’re wearing, Frank thought, and just what we’re not.
    “There’s another body here,” Bryce told the general. “Do you want to have a look at that one, too?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “It’s this way, sir,” Frank said.
    He led them out of the kitchen and down the hall, his gun drawn.
    Frank dreaded entering the bedroom where the dead woman lay naked in the rumpled sheets. He remembered the crude things that Stu Wargle had said about her, and he had the terrible feeling that Stu was going to be there now, coupled with the blonde, their dead bodies locked in cold and timeless passion.
    But only the woman was there. Sprawled on the bed. Legs still spread wide. Mouth open in an eternal scream.
    When Copperfield and his people had finished a preliminary examination of the corpse and were ready to go, Frank made sure they had seen the .22 automatic which she had apparently emptied at her killer. “Do you think she would have shot at just a cloud of nerve gas, General?”
    “Of course not,” Copperfield said. “But perhaps she was already affected by the gas, already brain damaged. She could have been shooting at hallucinations, at phantoms.”
    “Phantoms,” Frank said. “Yes, sir, that’s just about what they would’ve had to’ve been. Because, see, she fired all ten shots in the clip, yet we found only two expended slugs—one in that highboy over there, one in the wall where you see the hole. That means she mostly hit whatever she was shooting at.”
    “I knew these people,” Doc Paige said, stepping forward. “Gary and Sandy Wechlas. She was something of a markswoman. Always target shooting. She won several competitions at the county fair last year.”
    “So she had the skill to make eight hits out of ten,” Frank said. “And even eight hits didn’t stop the thing she was trying to stop. Eight hits didn’t even make it bleed. Of course, phantoms don’t bleed. But, sir, would a phantom be able to walk out of here and take those